Short Bits: Sideshow, Netflix, Media Manager
Mike
did a great comparison of all of the different Netflix plug-ins for Media
Center, and Alan
seems to be doing good with his semi-recent CableCARD purchase.
Ricavision looks
like they are getting ready (again) to release their Sideshow remote. While I love the concept, I can’t suggest
anyone do business with Ricavision right now.
First it was delaying
the remote well over a year, then raising
their pre-sale prices, then running their beta program by asking for $350 retail price
upfront (plus shipping) from testers, then
posting them up on Amazon for pre-order (with free shipping) just days
about the beta invites started! Sorry
Ricavision, I’m not biting. I guess the
one good thing is Amazon.com is actually selling them direct, so if something
goes wrong at least you know Amazon can handle it correctly. I look forward to a v2 model that doesn’t
come at a crazy price tag and baggage that v1 clearly does.
Another day, another open source Media Center plug-in
(loving being able to say that). Today it is MCE Media Manager,
which is an MCML plug-in for managing different types of media. Currently, it is sort of a torrent plug-in, syncing
with uTorrent to display the status of downloading torrents. Besides that, the developer hopes to use the
project as a learning experience for MCML.
