Update for Windows 7 Media Center (KB978632) “Tuner Busy Issue”

Just noticed a blog post on our product page about a new Media Center hotfix!

Microsoft finally released a hotfix for a bug that affects Media Center extensibility applications that are using tuners. The addressed bug freezes the extensibility application, the host (ehexthost.exe) and the Media Center (ehshell.exe), when applications request a tuner while no tuner is available and the user clicks “Cancel” on the conflict page that appears. Closing Media Center doesn’t help, you need to kill ehshell.exe and ehexthost.exe in your TaskManager to use Media Center again.

How to reproduce the bug:

1.  Grab a machine with only one tuner configured and running Windows 7.
2.  Record some show that is airing right now.
3.  Create a new WMCPL application.
4.  In your application invoke PlayMedia(MediaType.TV, “MSNBC”, false);    Note: Make sure you are NOT tuning the same channel you’re recording on right now.
5.  As soon as you invoke PlayMedia, Windows Media Center should bring up the “solve conflict” page because you have only one tuner and that tuner is busy recording a show on a different channel. Click “Cancel” to keep the recording running.
6.  Your WMCPL should freeze now. Inside your code, the debugger will never leave PlayMedia – it feels like it is blocked inside PlayMedia and can’t go forward.

Get the hotfix:   x86  |  x64

Making external assemblies “well known” in MCML

When referencing assemblies in MCML we can provide a weak or strong reference.

Weak:
           xmlns:cor=”MSCorLib/System”

Strong:
           xmlns:x=”res://Assembly,Version=1.0. 0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=af4c3f16c336eb1d!SampleView.mcml”

When referring to code or markup that is located in an external assembly we need to provide a strong reference. Have you ever wondered why you need to? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always use a weak reference – even if you are referring to resources located in external assemblies? Some developers like to have a separate assembly with their views, view related code and graphics. However, if you do so, you will always have to provide your external assemblies full name (incl. version, culture, public key) and take care of your external assembly’s full name (increment version, delayed signing, etc).

You may write some markup like this:

This piece of MCML code won’t actually work as expected since the presentation layer will not load the specified MCML resource from our external assembly because we did not provide a strong reference. I am not sure why Microsoft designed it like this, but I guess because we should specifically “select” the necessary assembly since the GAC could contain several versions of an assembly – the presentation layer doesn’t support mind reading yet so we need to make clear which assembly we want to be loaded.

This is how the SDK explains when to use which syntax:

MCML supports both types of syntax to refer to resources and assemblies.A weak assembly reference can be replaced with a strong assembly reference, and the application will continue to work as expected. However, the reverse is not always true. Use strong and weak assembly references as follows:

 

• When referring to resources within an assembly that is currently loaded, including your application assembly, you can use a weak or strong assembly reference.
• When referring to resources that are within the same assembly as the code or markup, it is recommended you use weak assembly references for readability purposes.
• When referring to resources in an assembly that is outside of the assembly that is currently loaded, use a strong reference.
• When referring to code or markup that is located in an external assembly, use strong assembly names and ensure that those external assemblies are installed into the GAC.

The SDK states that you can use weak references for any assembly loaded. So this means, I can refer to any assembly loaded into my applications domain using a weak reference! The .NET Framework provides a class named “AppDomain” which allows us to interact with the application domain(s) – we will use it to manually load our assemblies and make them available to our MCML code.

If you give this technic a try, you will see weak referenced external assemblies will in fact be available to your MCML code! Manually loading required assemblies works but brings some new problems on the table. We will have to take care that we load the desired assemblies before loading our MCML code. Also would we have to take care, that we don’t forget to extend this section when referencing new/additional assemblies.

So how could we help the presentation layer to automatically locate and load necessary assemblies?

When developing WMCPL applications, we’re in the wonderful world of .NET! If we refer to an assembly using a weak reference in our MCML code, the presentation layer will “ask” the under laying .NET environment to load the required assembly. The .NET environment will then try to find it in several locations:

• Application location: Since the extensibility platform host (ehexthost.exe) is loading and hosting our application, the physical location that will be checked is %windir%\ehome
• Global Assembly Cache: When the .NET environment couldn’t find the assembly in the application location, it will look into the GAC

Usually assemblies are installed to the GAC. However, because we’re using a weak reference, no assembly will be loaded since we’re not referring to a specific assembly – even if there is an assembly in the GAC matching the provided assembly name.

If the environment fails to locate the requested assembly, we get the chance to locate and load it on our own. To do so, we need to handle the AppDomains AssemblyResolve event.

The AssemblyResolve event will be fired, if the referenced assembly could not be located. This can happen if the requested assembly is not available on the target machine or because of a weak reference in our MCML code that doesn’t contain the necessary information to identify the assembly exactly.

So, we just attach an event handler and when the event gets fired, we will try to determine which assembly the environment was trying to load and get the first assembly from the GAC by matching the assembly name and/or comparing the assembly version.

I’ve created a sample project including a handy little class that will help you to get started named “AssemblyResolver”.

Calling  MakeCustomAssembliesWellknown  once will make sure that the required assembly will be loaded from the GAC – even if you’re using weak references in your MCML code. Fyi, this initial version of AssemblyResolver will try to locate the required assembly in the GAC and load the first assembly that’s found – you may extend the class to get the latest version of the assembly.

I hope this helps to understand the Media Center platform a bit more – even if you don’t plan to use the AssemblyResolver. Feel free to leave your feedback on my blog or just contact me directly.

Download sample project

Hey! We’re hiring Windows Media Center developers!

We have an open position in our team and are looking for capable candidates  :-)

 

Description:

Software Development Engineer – Personal TV PC Platforms
Job Title: Software Development Engineer, Personal TV PC Platforms
Location: Berlin, Germany
Department: Engineering
Reports To: Director, Engineering

We are seeking a qualified candidate to help develop and support an exciting new tv service for a range of personal computer platforms, with initial focus on the European and North American markets. The service consists of a great state of the art personalised program recommendation technology, combined with leading program guide, metadata and targeted advertising delivery system. The offering is supported by an extensive range of intellectual property and global relationships with leading software and hardware providers.

The Software Development Engineer position will report to the Director of Engineering, and is located in Berlin, Germany.

Responsibilities:
- Involvement in whole project life cycle
- Develop market-ready consumer products together with product / design team
- Develop products / components according to specifications alone, in teams or with outsourcing partners
- Explore new technologies and platforms, and investigate opportunities to use these for new products
- Deployment together with major OEM partners, including project management tasks
- Work with QA / support team on maintenance and bug fixing

Experience:
- Experienced C# Software developer with knowledge of C++ on Windows
- At least 2 years of hands-on work experience in application software development on Microsoft platforms, preferably for consumer-oriented multimedia software products and services
- Experience with TV software solutions, media center software, media streaming and / or broadcast
- Experience with the development of plugins for Windows Media Center highly desired
- Proven ability to meet qualitative goals and consistently meet deadlines

Critical Competencies:
- Visual Studio C#, C++, .NET
- Good knowledge of the Windows environment (Vista and Windows 7 32/64bit, UAC etc.)
- Results-oriented, self-motivated team player
- Good communication skills, both written and oral, and willingness to work in an international, decentrally organised team
- Outstanding analytical, operational and time management skills and great attention to detail and quality
- Ability to see a problem from multiple angles and propose and evaluate solutions
- Independent hard working individual with superior teamwork skills

Useful skills:
- Vista Media Center Development skills: MCML, related .NET APIs
- Windows libraries: WCF, BITS, Com Interop and Win32 APIs
- InstallShield experience is a plus
- Front-end GUI skills on Windows: WPF, MCML, Silverlight etc.
- Good knowledge of the Media Center software and the one on Vista / Windows 7 in particular
- SQL database development experience
- Web services and web-based applications

Education/Languages:
Bachelor or masters degree in engineering or computer science (or equivalent experience from project work). Fluent spoken and written English is mandatory; German highly desired.

—–

Interested?  Then send me your CV to  olcay@buyan.de  and I’ll forward it our internal HR department.

Olcay

How to use your fonts in MCML without installing them

In one of my current projects I did need to use a few custom fonts to represent the customers corporate ID. Usually I  would alter my setup script to install the font to %windir%\fonts and use it inside my MCML code like any other pre-installed system font.

But what if you are not allowed to install to the fonts-directory because your customer doesn’t want his fonts to show up in other applications like Word or Fireworks? The solution is easy – simply create an instance of the PrivateFontCollection-class (System.Drawing.Text), call AddFileFont and pass in the full path to the font file.

  PrivateFontCollection privateFonts = null;

  private void AddPrivateFonts()
  {
      privateFonts = new PrivateFontCollection();
      privateFonts.AddFontFile(@”c:\Tags.ttf”);
  }

As soon as you add your font to the collection, it will be available inside your application – just like any other font that is installed.

  <Text Color=”White” Font=”TagsFont, 155″ Content=”MCML rocks!” />

Output:

Getting together in Switzerland

On 18th + 19th october 2008, I had the pleasure to spent some time with Mesut and Senol Güngör - the founders of Prime Time GmbH, an innovative Media Center System Builder located in Liesthal, Switzerland. 

Liesthal is almost 350km away from Frankfurt am Main (Germany), very close the the swiss state border. Lucky me passed the state border after exactly 3 hours (note: we have highways without speed limits – 200km/h no problem).

Once arrived in Liesthal, I met Mesut and Senol - with whom I talked about Windows Media Center in general and the experience Prime Time made so far on the market. They showed me a few of their upcomming devices and immediately we started to talk about Windows Media Center not only as platform that is extendable using custom hardware, but also extending it using third party applications like TV Toolbox or even applications developed by Prime Time – they have some cool ideas.

However, it was great to meet and share experiences with Prime Time, they passed in some interesting feedback. I heard about things that an avarage developer would not take note of when developing Windows Media Center applications – simply because the avarage developer doesn’t build and sell Media Center systems. I hope I can introduce some of the feedback into my projects soon.

Fiji solves issues on HP tx2650eg Tablet PCs

A few days ago I’ve refreshed my Home Office setup:

• HP tx2650eg Tablet PC
• HP w2408h – 24″ screen
• HP LaserJet 1020 – laser printer
• HP xb3000 – docking station

I like the HP w2408h screen, I can connect my Linksys extender to it and simply switch btween input sources (docking station / extender). However, I was facing some really strange problems when running WMCPL applications on the HP tx2650eg. Windows Media Center runs perfect from day one – I can watch TV, record shows and watch DVDs etc.

But… as soon as I launched any “external” WMCPL application, the User Interface and especially videos were some how a little bit “lazy” and finally freezed – even the Media Centers own transport controls (play/pause, stop, etc.) on the right bottom didn’t respond anymore. It was really anoying and HPs support buddies couldn’t help me at all - I was about to send the whole setup back and get something from ASUS.

However, after installing Fiji, everything seems to work just fine.

UK Windows Media Center / Digital Lifestyle Meetup in 2009

Visitors of mce-community.de -the first and largest german speaking Windows Media Center related community worldwide – know about the yearly held Media Center event by Udo Sachansky (founder of the community). It’s always a pleasure to join and discuss general topics with the average user, business related things with corp scouts, and last but not least specific details on media center development with fellow developers.

Ian Dixon (www.thedigitallifestyle.com) is thinking about to organize an event for Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server enthusiasts in the UK next year. I  hope Ian is putting some precise information on the table asap because I will definitely join.

Make sure you leave a comment on Ian’s blog!

moreTV: remote recording – all facts

In August, I was in Brasov (Romania) to held a two day session on Windows Media Center development at the moreTV office. moreTV was developing a Windows Media Center client for their remote record service that already was available for STBs at that time. A few weeks later, moreTV presented their solution at the IFA consumer trade show in Berlin (Germany). So whoever didn’t have the chance to take a look at this at the IFA, here are the facts.

Scope of functionality

moreTV application for Microsoft Vista Media Center offers TV-centric services for Media Center users, who use their PC as TV or PVR device. moreTV offers a number of services that enhance the TV experience using the MS Vista Media Center.

The main services that are offered are

Electronic Program Guide (EPG)

• 14-day EPG using Premium Data featuring genre filter, list view, etc
• Personalized and Editorial Recommendations moreTV recommends for each user the highlights of the day and personalized recommendations
• Search Buddy
• All shows related to a user-defined keyword are automatically recorded.
• Remote Recording: Schedule recordings from anywhere in the world using an Internet-PC or an iPhone
  2 Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
• 14-day Premium EPG for all german channels
• Advanced filter and search options
• Series recording assistants
• Advanced overview screen
• including thumbnail
• Rich metadata information, like genre and description
• Detail screen

Recommendations


moreTV is the navigator through the jungle of hundreds of TV stations. To give the user the overview over the TV shows that might be interesting for him, moreTV features a multi-level recommendation engine, that includes Editorial, User-based and personalized recommendations. 

Editorial Tipps

Based on Editorial Tipps from one of Germanys best TV-listings publisher, moreTV offers the TV Highlights of the day for a variety of genres. The user is informed about the highlights of the day, 14 days in advance.

Personal Recommendations

moreTV offers the user TV shows that match his viewing preferences. Based on his viewing habits, moreTV records automatically what the user likes to watch.

Top 10

For each day, moreTV shows the user, the 10 most popular TV shows amongst all moreTV users, based on the number of sche Search Buddy.

Search Buddy

Whatever the user likes, a certain actor, or director or a specific topic, with moreTV search buddy he can define a keyword-based search buddy, which will automatically record all matching TV shows.

Remote Recording

Users can schedule recordings for the MS Vista Media Center remotely from anywhere in the world. moreTV remote recording supports mainly german channels with some additional channels from neighbouring countries. moreTV remote recording can be used via browser-based moreTV webEPG and via iPhone.

Web EPG

Web-optimized version of Premium EPG data featuring:

• 14 days of data
• Editorial Tipps
• Complete Set of German channels including Premiere PayTV + most important channels from neighbouring countries.

Url: http://epg.more.tv

iPhone mobileEPG

• mobile Edition of moreTV EPG
• optimised for mobile news
• Editorial Tipps of the Day
• Direct link to “now on TV” and prime-time shows
• Recording options for all shows

As far as I know, there will be a public version available “soon” – details on possible fees and terms of use in general will follow as soon as I get more details.

Media Center workshop at Axinom

Today I had a workshop at Axinom – developers of the worldwide #2 Windows Media Center application – ZDF Mediathek (IPTV service of ZDF -  a public service television channel in Germany).

It’s not a shame to be #2 - since the #1 application worldwide is FOX Sports (if I remember right) and if you think about how “tight” FOX Sports is integrated into the Windows Media Center shell, they can be pretty proud about being #2. In fact ZDF Mediathek is the #1 IPTV service in Europe!

So today I had a workshop with Johannes Jauch (one of the CEOs of Axinom) and Frank Zehelein (DevLead of the project – can’t tell which project due to NDA). We worked through the concept(s), discussed different parts of the design in detail – and sometimes… you can discuss something very obvious like ”recognizing a focus indicator” very extensively. But thats actually necessary - if you want to provide a self-explaining user interface :)

After the workshop I met Damir Tomicic – like Johannes, he is one of the CEOs of Axinom. Damir is also the president of INETA Europe (International .NET Association) and member of INETA Worldwide Executive Council. I know Damir for a while now and it’s always a pleasure to talk with him about Windows Media Center, great technologies that are available today and solutions you can provide powered by those technologies! He often comes up with the business aspects related to all this very quickly – which is great because developing Windows Media Center applications became a part of my personal income.

I hope I can present some of the projects I am involved in soon.

Windows Media Center development in Brasov (Romania)

A few weeks ago Johannes Jauch (one of the CEOs of Axinom – the leading .NET solution provider in Germany) asked me if I would like to do a workshop on Windows Media Center development in Romania. Nothing special, since this is what I do mostly – supporting corporations as well as individuals – I aggreed and started to prepare for the workshop – actually I did need to check whether I need a visa for Romania… sounds easy right? But I tell you, if somebody is complaining about the opening hours of german departments, take a look at the opening hours of the romanian consulates! They open at 9.00AM and close the doors at 12AM – how nice is that?

However, their email responses are pretty good – so I after days of trying to reach somebody at the consulate, I dropped an email and surprisingly I received and very informative response – telling me that I don’t need a visa – woohoo! I informed the necessary people and booked my flight – a few days later I was on the road to Brasov (Romania).

Arriving in Bukarest after a short flight (2:20hrs), I thought I could pass the passport check quickly – but unfortunately the federal police had a few questions.

However, I was still good in time – of course I had only hand baggage.

But because I could pass through so quickly, I couldn’t find the ordered driver (Victor) - however he arrived at the airport a few minutes later and we started our trip to Brasov. Victor picked me up with a nice car - a ~2007 Mercedes Benz E-Class. On the road we talked about politics, cars, women, the industry in Romania, the second world war and corruption - of course a wide range of topics but if you sit in the car for more than 2 hours, you need something to talk about.

After arriving in Brasov and checking in at the hotel, I visited the company and met the developers – a group of smart guys with a lot of vitamin C#. We talked about Windows Media Center in general and their current project for the IFA trade show in Berlin (Germany). The IFA trade show is important – it’s the worlds leading trade show for the general public – major consumer electronics brands present themselves at this unique event. A showcase for innovation and the technology of tomorrow – coupled with a spectacular programme of entertainment events. I was however, suprised how much they already got up and running – which in fact was good, because we could than move to specific questions and try to solve those or find the right direction to go.

There were some questions or topics that I face very often when talking with developers… let’s list a few of them:

• Light samples - Z and Q applications are nice but in addition of complete samples, customers want encapsulated samples to learn one specific feature (like the Repeater or the VirtualList).  One solution per sample/feature would be nice.
• Model/View seperation - Projects have proven that it makes sense to have a ViewModel between your View (MCML) and Model (.NET/Data your application will “use”). Why? -> encapsulated responsibilities, ability to test UI behavior (unit testing), clean code structure, etc. Inside the ViewModel you can prepare your data from the Model for easy access from the UI (MCML), keep UI related states and more.
  
• UI design guides – customers want samples to learn how to implement an UI concept they have received from a Designer.
• Promote exisitng UI classes (Choice, ArrayListDataSet, etc)  - This is what I see very often… developers don’t notice these great exisiting classes, like the Choice or VirtualList class – instead they use generic lists or even worst they start writing own classes because generic lists don’t cover their needs (ChosenIndex, …). Those classes are very handy (even more if used in the ViewModel).
• Place your “prepared” data in your (View)Model and try to handle everything inside your .NET code… especially state related data - Having helper classes for UI related things in your ViewModel instead pumping up the <Locals> section in MCML documents is much cleaner and of course accessable for unit testing.  Also you can handle specific events already in your ViewModel instead of taking an extra round (.NET -> MCML -> .NET).

Overall, regarding the project, I am happy that we could get trough a lot of things or found the direction to go on topics that did need further investigation – hope to see the solution at the IFA when I attend - end of august this year.

Thanks!
Olcay