It turns out that Microsoft [I]is[/I] bringing out Windows XP Media Center Edition in Australia, but until such time as it materialises -- and Microsoft Australia is being very sketchy on the dates -- those of us looking to integrate our PC media files with our televisions and hi-fi systems have to turn to bridging solutions.
Thankfully not all of these are complete hodge-podge bridges between the analog and the digital. The Windows XP Media Center Edition-esque ShowCenter from Pinnacle Systems is a perfect example of the technology done right.
The ShowCenter is a two-part media adaptor that is comprised of a slimline hardware unit about the width of a DVD player that nestles amongst your hi-fi equipment, and a 'server' application that runs on your PC. Together the ShowCenter lets you access movies, music and photos stored on your PC in the lounge room on the television with a remote control.
The ShowCenter is compatible with many file formats, including MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG-4 AVIs (including Xvid and DivX) for video playback, MP3 or PCM encoded audio for music and JPEG and BMP for photo slideshows and display. What's more, the ShowCenter server software background converts other file formats for playback compatibility such as down-sampling WMA audio files to 128Kb/s MP3, transcoding WMV or DV video clips to a user-specified format and converting PNG and GIF files to TV-optimised JPEG. All conversions leave your original files intact and run hidden in the background.
Out of the box, the ShowCenter is a wired media player getting all the audio and video data it needs from your PC via a 10/100 Ethernet port. The unit comes bundled with both a 10m Ethernet cable for network hub set-ups, and a 5m Ethernet cross-over cable for direct connections. For those that fancy wireless the ShowCenter player also has a PC Card slot and is both 802.11B and G compatible, though for video transfers you really 802.11G and a strong reception.
Setting up the unit is as simple as installing the ShowCenter server software on your PC, and plugging in and powering up the player.
The ShowCenter unit is a thin and sleek silver hi-fi component with a single translucent blue-lit power button and a few blue LED status lights on its stylish front, but the rear of the unit tells a different story. Here it comes with SCART, RCA Component, Component, S-Video, stereo RCA audio outputs (x2), plus both optical and RCA digital audio out. This is a fair range of outputs, which means it should fit nicely amongst your existing AV equipment.
The software installation process on the PC side is straightforward -- you direct the software to where your music, video and image files are located or you can let the software scan your hard disks for content. It compiles the found data into a centralised ShowCenter media application that's a lot like MusicMatch Jukebox and its ilk. This is where it pays to have had your files properly organised with ID3 tags. This is particularly true for artist and genre data as the software intelligently garners this information from the embedded file information, and not from file or folder structure. I'm not much a believer in tagging files, so unfortunately most of my media was grouped together into a massive list that I had to scroll through manually later.
Once the software's installed -- and it only takes a few minutes unless you've got a lot of WMA files in which case it can take a very long time -- all that's left is to hook up the slim silver ShowCenter player to your stereo and TV and plug in the Ethernet. The player uses a form of Plug-and-Play to detect available servers; you select your system and off you go. For more secure connections you can specify hardier networking settings, but on a closed network the defaults worked fine.
The main television interface is menu driven, and very intuitive. When selecting movies a small preview window pops up in the bottom-left hand corner of the screen and begins previewing the footage. If it's what you're after you press the 'fullscreen' button and the film takes over the display. Music is a different matter, as songs are played from the main screen with title information displayed across the top. With properly configured files you can browse by artist, genre, and even create favourite lists and playlists.
While streaming media from your PC to your lounge is excellent, it's the performance overhead that it adds to your PC that is most surprising. Even with background file conversions running or streaming DivX movies the PC showed only insignificant lag when running a game benchmark and even when playing a second DivX movie.
There are a few things the ShowCenter doesn't do such as record TV or have any storage of its own, but all up, while there are a few interface and software issues with the ShowCenter, I found it to be the perfect option over having a dedicated media PC as it frees up your machine for other uses.