Happy New Year! We hope it’s a great one for you and yours.

Electronic House has the story and a slideshow here. The Microsoft executive wanted to remain unidentified to protect his family’s privacy, but he showed the home off to a few reporters in late November.

The article: Top Microsoft Exec Shows Off Media Center-Based Home

The slideshow

Every now and then we decide to try out some of the free plugins for Media Center. Today it’s the MyNetflix plugin from Anthony Park.

MyNetflix lets you access your Netflix queue through Media Center. You can

• View your Netflix queue
• Browse movies by genre, top 100, new titles, etc.
• View your history and recommendations
• Add movies to your queue
• Remove movies from your queue
• Move movies to the top of your queue
• Browse “watch now” movies
• Play “watch now” movies

Note that you cannot play “watch now” movies from an Xbox using this plugin–Microsoft has teamed up with Netflix to make this happen, though, so if that’s your interest, check this out.

FYI: “Watch Now” movies from Netflix require that you have Microsoft Silverlight installed on your computer. If you don’t already have it installed, it will ask you to install the first time you start a movie on your computer.

OK, so along to the installation:

Download and installation of the plugin went smoothly. As part of the installation, you must enter your Netflix login and password so that Media Center can access your queue.

 Enter your information. You can hit the “Test” button if you want to verify that the plugin connects correctly. This finished the installation.

I immediately found MyNetflix in the program library under “programs by name.”

 I had no problem viewing my Netflix queue, and even started a “watch now” movie (Spider Baby, a weird little cult horror movie starring Lon Chaney, Jr., for anyone who’s interested).

Verdict? Works perfectly! If you’d like to manage your Netflix queue and watch Netflix movies through Media Center, download it now! It’s free, but you could certainly toss the developer a little appreciation through PayPal.

For the second year in a row, a Life|ware installation is the winner of the Windows Media Center Ultimate Install Contest!

The winning installation was done by cyberManor, a Los Gatos, California integration company, and submitted by the company president, Gordon Van Zuiden.

CEPro has the whole story, with slideshow. Enjoy!

What’s the main issue with general adoption of Media Center? According to Wired’s Gadget Lab blog, it’s nuts-and-bolts issues.  

Media Center users get stuck on the fact that they can’t set a TV tuner preference for an individual channel or that it lacks a record HD content-only feature.

Microsoft’s new venture, the Media Center Integrator Alliance, aims to help integrators and users address those issues by providing more information about how to maximize their Media Center experience. But the Gadget Blog is more interested in Exceptional Innovation’s new Life|medias.

The Lifemedia comes with customizable UI’s, support for the iPhone (to make it a useful remote control), and a fully integrated wireless connection. Basically, the promise is that if every Vista owner had one of these boxes, the ‘Vista Sucks’ jokes would be hard to come by.

The newly-announced Life|media LMS-172 and LMS-175 provide premium service for much-less-than-premium prices.

Wired’s article here.
More on the new Life|medias (did you know they have a 5.1 surround-sound amplifier, ZigBee control technology, and support for iPhone as a remote?) at CEPro.

Today is the last day to enter your Media Center installation in Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Ultimate Install contest. You can win a free trip to CEDIA (flight and accommodations) a trip for two to Microsoft, and lots of Microsoft swag for your homeowner.

Head right over to Microsoft’s Ultimate Install site and get those entries in!