Migrating from MS MCE to BTV

[cannon]

I currently run Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005 and because I was somewhat unhappy with it, I bought Beyond TV and installed it on the same machine. I have had some issues migrating from MCE to BTV and I wonder if anyone has any advice:

1. Whenever I start up BTV it marks all my previously recorded tv as read-only. This means I can no longer delete things from within MCE. Since I'm not ready to stop using MCE entirely, this causes me problems.

2. The shows that I recorded in MCE (about 400 GB worth) show up in BTV but are listed using the file name, not a friendly display name for the recorded program. Is there any way to improve this? I'd like to have a nice view of my recorded shows.

3. BTV seems a little harder to read than MCE. I'm using a regular TV, not a computer monitor or an HDTV set. Is there any way to tune the BTV interface to be easier to read from "10 feet" away?

In general, I like the fact that BTV makes it easier to store shows in format that you choose and burn things to DVD. But it seems like MS has spent more on user interface design and programming than Snapstream has. Granted, my judgement on UI quality is subjective.

Thanks.

[cmcquistion]

3. If you're viewing on a standard TV set, try lowering your resolution to 640x480. This will increase the size of the icons and letting and you're not losing an picture quality, since your standard TV set is low resolution.

[Mistergq]

Cannon:

3) I would also recommend a resolution of 640x480 or 800X600 to have a nice readable on standard tv.

2) Since BTV did not record these shows, unforntuately, I am not sure of any way to make it easy for BTV to have an easy to read file name without renaming every file. It will be a pain, but it will probably worth it in the long run.

As to #1, I am not sure how to fix that.

[nparker13]

Originally Posted by cannon

I currently run Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005 and because I was somewhat unhappy with it, I bought Beyond TV and installed it on the same machine. I have had some issues migrating from MCE to BTV and I wonder if anyone has any advice:

1. Whenever I start up BTV it marks all my previously recorded tv as read-only. This means I can no longer delete things from within MCE. Since I'm not ready to stop using MCE entirely, this causes me problems.

Have you tried manually changing them (select all, right click properties, uncheck read only)? If so does it just keep checking them? Could have to do with the fact that theyre not 'BTV friendly' but im just guessing.

2. The shows that I recorded in MCE (about 400 GB worth) show up in BTV but are listed using the file name, not a friendly display name for the recorded program. Is there any way to improve this? I'd like to have a nice view of my recorded shows.

What does the MCE format look like. If it contains all the same information, I bet it wouldnt be too dificult to find a script or even write one that would do the renaming. That said, I dont know of any for windows. I do know if you have a mac friend it would be very easy to do with automator.

3. BTV seems a little harder to read than MCE. I'm using a regular TV, not a computer monitor or an HDTV set. Is there any way to tune the BTV interface to be easier to read from "10 feet" away?

See other peoples posts, i had the same problem, it worked for me

In general, I like the fact that BTV makes it easier to store shows in format that you choose and burn things to DVD. But it seems like MS has spent more on user interface design and programming than Snapstream has. Granted, my judgement on UI quality is subjective.

Thanks.

Hope this helps at least a little.

nate