1. Download the installer from http://www.myownchannels.com/MOCWeb/Sub ... lient.aspx (free registration required)
2. Disable exclusive audio control for your audio output device:
-Right click on the speaker icon in system tray and go to playback devices
-Right click on your audio output device and select properties
-Go to the advanced tab and uncheck "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device"
-Click Ok
After you launch the add-in (it's hidden in the Extras section), you can type in channel numbers for each of the 4 screens. Once you're ready, press Play and it will launch all 4 of the games you selected. While viewing the games, you can use the arrow keys to select which game audio you want to hear.
Requirements:
-Minimum of Core 2 Quad CPU (it functions on a Core 2 Duo, but has some freezing when playing 4 HD streams)
-Hard Disk space...the games are recorded as they are played, so it takes about 30-40GB per hour of game watching for 4 HD streams
There are definitely a few limitations with this add-in as it exists today, so I'll list them out here so that nobody is surprised by it:
1. This is a hybrid add-in that uses additional software besides Windows Media Center, so it won't work on an extender. I'm investigating whether that could work on an extender, and it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility for the future.
2. It will create four 5-hour recordings for the 4 games you choose to watch. Cleaning up those recordings was not practical for the first run at this application, so you'll have to stop the recordings on your own and delete them from your Recorded TV afterward. You'll obviously need a pretty good bit of hard drive space to accomodate this during a several hours window of watching 4 HD games.
3. The recordings it creates will take precedence over any other recordings you have scheduled. Any other way of doing this made the application extremely frustrating to use (like having to click through multiple pop-up boxes and manage your recordings to get the games to start playing).
4. The add-in has to run in windowed (not full-screen) mode. It will automatically take itself out of full screen mode when you launch it. It's supposed to put it back into full-screen mode when you exit, but that part of the software has been a little buggy. If you find yourself with a windowed Windows Media Center and the window handles are off the visible screen, you can use Alt-Enter to get it to go back to full-screen. This bug is high on my list to get fixed, but it didn't seem likely to happen in the next few days, and I wanted to get the add-in out there before New Year's because of all the sporting events happening then.
5. Because of some Windows Media Center limitations, you can't use sub-channels (5.1 or 5-1). I'm assuming that most people using this will have a CableCard tuner. If that's the case, you can work around it by merging your over-the-air or QAM channels with a cable channel with a standard channel number.
6. You can only watch channels that are flagged as Copy Freely by your cable company or that are unencrypted.
Try it out if you're interested and let me know if you have any issues. I may or may not have time to do bug fixes before New Year's, but if there are major issues, I will try to fix them.
