March 2006 Archives

After trying to use Movielink to stream movies to the XBox360 and failing miserably, I thought I'd give their competitor a shot. At first look, their interface through MCE seemed better, less pixelated and it fit better in the screen, but their content wasn't nearly as extensive as Movielink's. They have a very limited selection and absolutely no free samples to test out the technology. Since there were no free samples, I passed trying it from my MCE2005 server to the XBox360.

Result, not enough content to bother.

Unbelievable that Movielink doesn't work with XBox extenders. After seeing how this is a company that Intel supports with Viiv (MCE + special hardware), I can't see how they can get away with it. I recently downloaded a sample movie of theirs to test streaming through my XBox360. I got in a loop where the Movielink Manager wouldn't complete it's install, it kept failing. Since they offered with the Live Chat (I guess they expected problems, huh?), I tried it out. Here is the transcript.

Katie S.: Hello Shawn
Katie S.: Do you have your pop up blocker enabled?
Shawn: i disabled it.
Shawn: that's what happened though
Katie S.: Ok, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://4077.movielink.com/moviemanager/CleanWMPDRM.exe
Katie S.: Follow the link above. We will need to delete your DRM component, which may also delete licenses from other music/movie rentals that you have in windows media format. If this is ok, proceed to click "Yes."
Katie S.: Let me know when the clean up is successful
Shawn: ok
Shawn: ok meaning its done
Katie S.: Good, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp .
Katie S.: Click upgrade when enabled
Katie S.: and let me know when it is complete
Shawn: it's done
Katie S.: Click Start -> Programs -> movielink -> Relaunch Movielink Manager and let me know if you are able to open the Movielink Manager
Shawn: that did it.
Shawn: thanks

Ok, that's fine, got it to work on my MCE2005 desktop. Now I want to stream it to my XBox360 as a Media Center Extender. Didn't work. Unfortunately I get this error while trying to play the sample movie:

Security Error.
Unable to validate security of your media center extender. As a result, the extender will not play protected media content.

Now I contact "Live Chat" again to see what the problem is:

Fred C: Hello
Shawn: hi
Fred C: Shawn, unfortunately I cannot offer support for Media Center Extenders
Shawn: ok thanks.

Slam! Result, Movielink + Xbox360 = Waste of time. Now time to try CinemaNow.

Rain, rain go away! We are ready to get outside and play. Rachel has cabin fever sooo bad. Other than the rain, everything else is well here in Washington. Kids are doing well. Shawn and I are good too. Trying to get fit and trim for the summer. Through the week were both okay but then the weekends come and we cave in. It's hard to stay good when you go over to friends houses and have parties at church and such.

Shawn and I are staying busy with church projects. Shawn is working on website stuff and I have started a Ladies Night Out once a month. I'm also putting together, with help from some friends, four other projects for everyone at church. I get depressed when I don't have a project to work on, however, I have spaced them out so I don't get burned out or overwhelmed.

Jax is getting sooo big sooo fast. He's up to 21 lbs now. He has six teeth and is getting brave and letting go to try to walk. Rachel is up to 38 lbs (we'll run those off as soon as we can get out and play). We went to the "snowy mountain" a couple of Saturdays ago. Rachel had a blast, Jax didn't know what to think of the snow.

On the news last night, they were saying that Mt. Baker has a base of 199 inches of snow. At this time last year, it only had 15 inches. And it's still snowing up there! We still haven't gotten to go skiing yet, maybe before it'a all gone.

Gotta go for now. Love you all. Check out the new pictures.