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Widnows Media Center


systm
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Ok, so before the release of the the second beta of Bootcamp, I had installed Windows Media Center on my MacBook...

It wasn't much us then as the majority of the things didn't work all that well, but that is neither here nor there.

My question is, that the Xbox 360 universal remote works with the 360 as well as the WinMCE computers. The MacBook as well as the Pro and iMacs come with IR receivers built in, so does anyone know if and how to get the two to work together?

 

Thanks

 

systm

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The IR receiver is not compatible. I'm sure since it's HID that it could, but there would have to be a Media Center driver. That might come long after Vista is out, since Media Center is in Home Premium.

 

Your best bet would be to email Boot Camp Feedback at Apple and request MCE IR Receiver support in a future driver release. Just don't bet on it happening.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Uh, no.

 

Media Center & Bluetooth work fine on Boot Camp.

The Xbox 360 works fine over Boot Camp. The Xbox 360 uses 802.11a/b/g (with the extra wireless adapter) and 10/100 Ethernet (built-in). The "special frequency" on the Xbox 360 is only used for the game controllers.

 

The only feature of Media Center on Boot Camp that doesn't work is the IR remote port on your Mac.

 

Now, Apple doesn't support Boot Camp installs of XP Media Center because you cannot insert Disc 2 without an external CD drive (or, copying the source files to the hard drive in OS X after the first phase of the install).

 

Windows Media Center will be fully supported as a component of Windows Vista in upcoming versions of Boot Camp. However, I don't know if IR support will be added since that is an optional component. If you want it, send an email to bootcamp@apple.com and make a request.

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The Apple Remote port is custom-made. While it is just a standard HID interface, I suspect that the driver people want, and the driver that can be delivered are two different things.

 

What can probably be cooked up is a driver that forwards non-encrypted HID interface calls from a Media Center Remote. That would probably work.

 

What people probably want is a driver that will enable the Apple Remote to work with Media Center. That would require calls that presently only Apple can provide. And, the Apple Remote is one key below MC requirements to begin with. MC needs at least seven keys (Up down left right, return, and back), the Apple remote has six.

 

Unlike Front Row, Media Center has different keys for activating MC (the Media Center logo key) and for going back (the back button). Apple combined those two into the Menu key. You cannot assign a key in Media Center to both launch and go to the main menu, as well as go back through multiple menus in MC.

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Unlike Front Row, Media Center has different keys for activating MC (the Media Center logo key) and for going back (the back button). Apple combined those two into the Menu key. You cannot assign a key in Media Center to both launch and go to the main menu, as well as go back through multiple menus in MC.

 

I SUPPOSE there could be a workaround for that provided apple does the magic. If you note in OSX if you hold down the menu button (or was it the play button...) you can put the machine to sleep. Apple could simply write up software that results in a different response in windows. Something like hold down to activate Media Center and a single click to go back to the menu.

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It would have to be (another) constantly running background app. And it would have to sample the state of Media Center constantly to see what page the user was on. I certainly wouldn't want that running on my system... especially considering less than 1% of Mac users would use it, and of those users, most wouldn't want to waste the resources.

 

Doing things that require almost no resources on Mac thanks to Universal Access would take megabytes of wired RAM to do on Windows... and yes Windows fans, even with proper use of the all-things-to-all-people .Net Framework.

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that's what i was talking about

 

Well, you said:

 

technically, you can install media center, just with no drivers for bluetooth and stuff, and each ir remote, apple and 360 has a different freq, and you can't change that

 

And as I said, that wasn't correct. The IR port has nothing to do with Bluetooth. Bluetooth works fine on Media Center. The Xbox 360 has no special frequency for networking, it uses the same 802.11a/b/g that Macs support as well as the same 10/100 ethernet.

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