Add TV Streaming to Windows 7 Media Center

Add TV Streaming to Windows 7 Media Center

If you have installed the Home Premium or better version of Windows 7, you’d have Windows Media Center installed as well. The standard install needs additional manual settings to bring few more enhancements. You can head to Tasks -> Settings -> General -> Automatic Download Options to manually start the update.

After the update, you will see more Internet TV from CBS, MSN, Zune library and MSNBC…

•CBS Audience Network: Featuring a variety of shows from CBS Primetime, Daytime, Extras, and TV Classics, including full-length episodes of current TV shows, CBS Classics TV shows, short clips, and Web originals.
•Full Zune Video Podcast Library: Thousands of hours of entertainment with full TV episodes, webisodes, clips, and videos from providers including ABC News, CBS News, CNBC, CNET TV, Comedy Central, Current TV, The Discovery Channel, Fox, G4 TV, HBO, MSNBC, NBC, Showtime, and Revision 3, along with some of the best user-generated videos on the Web. Some video podcasts are also available in HD.
•MSN and msnbc.com: Clips as well as full length episodes from TV shows such as Arrested Development, news and weather from MSNBC, editor picks and most popular videos, five day weather forecasts, news, video playlists, music videos, movie trailers and more.
Other Windows Media Center Features in Windows 7:

•Watch Live TV on Your Windows 7 PC: By adding an inexpensive TV tuner to a Windows 7 PC, you can use Windows Media Center to watch, pause, and rewind live TV directly on your PC. There is no additional service charge to watch over-the-air channels in standard or high definition. You can also use your PC as a DVR to schedule recordings of TV shows and movies.
•Stream Digital Media from your Home PC: Never miss your favorite shows. With Windows 7 you can now access your Windows Media Center digital media even when you’re not at home by using Remote Streaming. Simply log in using your Windows Live ID to get your TV shows, movies, music, and pictures streamed to you over the internet – no matter where you are.
•Watch Recorded TV Shows on your Zune or Windows Phone: Watch your Windows Media Center recorded TV on-the-go. Just sync your recorded TV shows with your Zune digital media player or Windows Phone, and watch what you want no matter where you are.
•Access all your Personal Media in One Place: Windows Media Center brings in all digital media stored on the PC – photos, movies, music, and recorded TV shows – into one place. And new with Windows 7 you can use Home Group to access digital media in Windows Media Center from other PCs in your network.

A First Look At HBO Go: Curb Your Enthusiasm

TVErick Schonfeld
TechCrunch.com

Today HBO announced it will be making its movies and TV Shows available on the Web to subscribers through HBO Go, which up until now has been in private beta. HBO Go is part of the cable industry's TV Everywhere strategy to make TV content available online to paying subscribers. It contains 600 hours of movies and TV shows which can be streamed live and even in HD. HBO Go is available first to Verizon FIOS subscribers. Since I am a Verizon FIOS customer, I logged into HBO Go this morning and checked it out. (Despite reports elsewhere that it won't be available until Thursday, it is in fact now live). Below are my initial impressions and screenshots.The videos play decently and you can watch in HD, but if I wasn't already paying for HBO I certainly wouldn't pay for access to this site. The choice of shows and movies is just not that great. You can watch every episode of The Wire, and the final season of The Sopranos, but not one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. You get a lot more in your cable subscription, especially if you get multiple HBO channels. The on-demand option is great, but essentially HBO Go is competing with much broader array of choices on the TV which can also be made on-demand through a DVR. There are some movies like The Watchmen and Taken, which I think I've already seen three times each this month on TV, and a spattering of older archived movies like Canadian Bacon, but for the most part the selection is worse than what you get on Netflix via its streaming option. I'm not sure I want to see The Chumscrubber in HD.The site itself is well-designed, image heavy with lots of entry points. You are greeted with a slideshow view of ten shows and movies on heavy rotation, including the movie Taken, HBO Series Big Love and The Wire, and a Dennis Miller special. If you have HBO, you can't really avoid any of these shows, so nothing special there except that you can stream it anywhere on your laptop. Tabs across the top allow you to explore deeper into movies, series, comedy, sports, documentaries, and "late night" (aka, HBO's hard-hitting sex documentary series like Real Sex). Everything is done in Flash, which makes it a beautiful experience, but it won't be accessible on an iPad or iPhone without converting the site into an appFor each series, you can choose any episode for at least one season, but some shows are missing. You can also create a watchlist to watch shows later. When I was clicking through the site, the streaming quality was great, but when I tried to switch to another show or movie the audio to Canadian Bacon kept playing in the background (which isn't necessarily a bad thing?I love that movie). My main issue with HBO Go is not the fact that it is behind a paywall (after all, that is HBO's business even on TV) or the site's look and feel. The site's navigation is clean, everything is easy to find, and the playback looks great. And moving part of its video library online is a smart move for HBO. My issue is with the selection. It's not just that 600 hours of rotating shows and movies is just a fraction of what HBO shows on TV in any given month. Managing 600 hours of on-demand video is resource intensive, so HBO has to set some limit. HBO is not Web video company. But Hulu or even Verizon could manage a bigger catalog, and even keep the paywall. TV is moving online, as this first step by HBO illustrates. But ultimately, I want all the channels I get through Verizon to be available for searching, managing, and video streaming on the Web. Verizon FIOS already lets me program my home DVR from the Web, but I can only watch those shows on my TV. There is still a disconnect between my computer and my TV, and that is frustrating. And yes, I want it all because I am already paying for it.

Mixture of TV Shows Streaming From America "LIVE"