archGFX » MCX

WMP11 vs. MCX

adam — Sun, 28 May 2006 00:24:10 +0000

I love album art. despite david byrne reminding me that it's largely an advertisement for, not a reflection of, the album. So when Windows Media Player 11 grabbed a 'me too!' function from amarok, i had to go check it out. (since i sometimes listen to music with something other than my xbox media center extender.). it's kind of an odd trade off compated to the MCE interface. scrolling is much faster in the media center interface, but the album art loads instantly (versus sequentially as MCE does) in WMP 11.

i managed to scare myself, though. after i installed the beta, i went to check and make sure that the extender still worked. when i got to "My Music", it informed me that my music catalog had gone missing. oh, joy. so i rolled back to the system restore point right before the install. rebooted, and tried again, and got the same error. i opened WMP to see if it had, indeed, been downgraded (which it hadn't), and looked back up at the tv to see that the xbox was now re-cataloging my entire collection. fortunately i was about to leave the house, so the few hours of downtime didn't matter.

in other news, i took my first baby step on mission101, i borrowed from matt brett's hover tutorial, and made a completed class for my list:

05.27.06
~~make a nice looking ‘completed’ CSS class for this list~~

MCE vs. airTunes

adam — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:39:37 +0000

some website or other this morning complained about my lack of an updated quicktime. i haven't upgraded because the upgrade is only available packaged with iTunes. so, i nstalled it today, because everyone else in my apartment is running it, and the music sharing feature is easier to coordinate than windows file sharing. so, while i was setting that up, i figured i'd use iTunes to play music throught the airport express we've been using to share our printer.
the airport express works great as a print server. but up until now, it's lagged to much to be any use as a means of connecting the music on the ibook with the stereo. i always assumed it was an issue of wireless reception inside the apartment. so since nemesis is on a wired segment with the airport, i figured it should work well enough (despite being thoroughly unnecessary). turns out not. it seems that the lag is a problem oof the airport itself.
it just makes me appreciate my Xbox Media Center Extender more. i don't know if it's that the xbox is caching the stream, or that the airport is that much a piece of crap, but it's irrelavent. not to mention, the MCX operates with a remote, and does a millian times more than what the airport can do.
since the airport is supposed to go back to the roommate's boyfriend soon, i think we'll just replace the print server part. although it would be nice to have one that shares with zeroconf/bonjour.

DRM, MCE, and other 3 letter abbreviations

adam — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:40:00 +0000

current tune: minus the bear - fine + 2 pts.
i got my MCX update in the mail, finally. popped it in to install it, and got the media center setup screen. after checking "agree" on the license agreement, the setup screen closed, and it sent me to validate my copy of windows. ugh. in order to receive the update, i had to validate my xbox and my MCX software/game/whatever it's called. microsoft has really been pissing me off lately. granted, the validation program is still in beta, so i could have just opted out of it.
anyway, after that, a ~9MB installer downloaded and ran. finished with prompting me to restart.
remembering what the tech had said on my last phone call, i ran the setup disc again, to get to the point where it prompts me for the 8 digit code, before sticking the game disc in the xbox. this time, no prompt for a license agreement, it just starts installing something off the disc. apparently this was a 2-part install, but that wasn't terribly well noted.
so i got to the 8 digit code part, and popped in the game disc. the xbox connected without a hitch, so i wound up cancelling out of setup on the pc. whatever, now all my VBR mp3's play properly, including "under the pink" and the cowboy bebop movie soundtrack.about the music
with the update disc, there was a gift certificate for 5 downloads from music.msn.com. whee. i decided to go for the new(-ish) minus the bear ep, minus the last song, since it's 6 songs long. they're playing with straylight run, spitalfield, and gratitude on the 8th, so i wanted to know the new stuff before the show. i knew the music would have drm restrictions, but what the heck, it's free.
i didn't know that neither sony's sonic stage/connect software nor realplayer 10 wouldn't be able to validate said DRM, thus making me unable to transfer the songs to my minidisc. this is mainly a complaint to sony, since they don't make their netMD drivers comply with microsoft's "Portable Media Device" standard. especially when they sell media centers. i thought the point was for these things to work like appliances, not for you to have to open another app everytime you want to do something?
gargh.
here's where i start preaching. we'll start with some reference links:
the state of the industry
how things could evolve
why the industry should want things to evolve
my last rant on the subject
buying DRM music is giving up something. you have rights to make yourself infinite copies of your cd's and records. you don't have to "check in" your mix tapes when you're done with them. not so with copy-protected *.wma or *.m4a tracks. but we get nothing back from this trade off. no price cut, no improved quality, nothing. pay as much or more than hard-copy prices for something with less sound quality, that you have less right to use. why would we?
i understand that right now, it's not possible for these "stores" to give everyone their share of the pie (see reference link #1) for less than $0.99 per song. so how about... better quality? come on, would it really be that hard for them to give us lossless files? both microsoft and apple are touting their new ultra hi-fi codecs, why not use them? i won't buy DRM music until it comes at unapologetic, no holds barred 24-bit 96Khz quality. there's no reason it shouldn't. but the record companies won't do it. because they're too lazy. it doesn't make any sense. pay more get less? fuck that. fuck them.
in the end, i couldn't get the files to transfer to my minidisc player, so since it's a minidisc player, not an ipod, i hooked it up to the optical output on my computer and dubbed it, old skool. 1998 > 2005