Engadget is showing a 1904 Chickering upright grand piano with an integrated 26-inch Philips LCD HDTV and a full-blown Media Center PC. Inquiring minds want to know how good the piano sounds with a Media Center and TV in it–but it’s kind of a cool idea all the same. Read all about it.
Where’s the most interesting place you’d like to install a media center?

Sound and Vision has an entertaining article about the renovation of a New York co-op with detail-oriented clients whose previous installer had absconded with their money! Life|ware is their choice for home control.

Read Installations: S.E.A.L. of Approval.

Above photo of first gen Zune with new and old software, stolen from Engadget.

Today was the official launch of the new Zunes, AND (more importantly for me) the new Zune software. While I didn’t stay up late (or get up early) like those good folks over at Engadget seem to have done, I did start my download about 3 minutes after my first cup of coffee–because I was excited to see if, as promised, I could download saved programs from Media Center to my Zune with the new software.

The short answer? YES. It works fabulously. The update process for my Zune device and the store was remarkably simple. Once I got my Zune store and my device updated, I took my refreshed device over to a Media Center here and got going.

Once I had identified a show I wanted, all I had to do was drag ‘n’ drop the show into the video section of the Zune store and sync. Voila! No conversion (or at least none outside Zune).

A few notes:

• I updated my Zune on my Windows XP laptop at home; then I updated the store software on the Vista machine at work and connected as a guest.
• I used WebGuide (which I covered a few blog posts back) to search for saved TV on other Media Centers on the network and download it to my local Media Center, which didn’t happen to have any saved shows–thus proving that not only can I get the content onto my Zune, I can also access the content from anywhere with WebGuide.
• I haven’t tried getting a show using the wireless sync yet–but I intend to!

CEPro has the goods on the winner of Microsoft’s Ultimate Media Center Installation contest, which (no surprise here) is powered by Life|ware! The winner was announced Wednesday at EHX. This is the first Life|ware installation in Utah.

Read the article on CEPro and check out the slideshow, or scroll down for information and pictures.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this chart on Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report that compares Windows® Media Center to other Media Center options based on available features. It appears that no other option has the feature set that Windows Media Center does - and with Life|ware for your home automation, seems like a no-brainer!

p.s. Ed Bott’s most recent post on Vista is also a pretty good read!