Media Center Add-ins Section

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DavidinCT

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#21

Post by DavidinCT » Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:54 pm

holidayboy wrote:
DavidinCT wrote:
Are you thinking just a FTP site for everything where people go in and browse content?
I think we'll be able to use FTP as a back end with the wiki as an optional front end to access files through (I need to double check how we originally set things up there to be sure).

It also means that there's a quick way for users to just get at the files using FTP if they want to.

I'll try a few things on a copy of the site to make sure things work as they should.

Work is pretty manic over the next couple of weeks but I'll get on it as soon as I can bit by bit.
Sounds perfect. Works for me ! And should keep things nice and neat here. I hear ya about being busy, I'm also crazy at work and it IS the silly season ! (where Live is crazier than normal !). Happy Holidays to everyone while I am at it :)

I should have SOME time to sort through all the apps ths weekend to see what we have all together right now (between newfiend and my personal stash) so we have a very solid staring point. Just a LOT of apps that we need to go through.

Just let me know what you need from me
jachin99 wrote:David, this looks good to me. Something to consider is this whole thing is going to be a kind of living document for a while, I.E. we will start off with a bunch of plugins we know nothing about, and hopefully end up with as many plugins working correctly as possible. You need to be able to make changes to the plugins center as these changes occur so having a good workflow, and documenting it as things change will help keep everyone focused, and updated. It might also be a good idea to do a little Dev recruiting, OR find a few people who want to learn how to make changes to plugins so that they can make them work. This way there could be roles like Tester, Dev, Fixer, Etc.
Agreed, in no way possible is this a 1 person job. I agree we need a few people to take this up or a small team to work on it, I don't see a BILLION apps coming in but, for a while with the amount of apps we have found there will be a lot of testing/reviewing of apps for a while.

I really hope the upload section can provide some of the rare ones that we could use. As if you look over the old TGB on the way back time machine site.... There are a lot of odd apps that I have not seen in years...
-Dave
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Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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#22

Post by jachin99 » Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:11 am


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#23

Post by jachin99 » Wed Dec 13, 2017 2:37 pm

I was able to grab some xp plugins from a few of those links and installed on a Win 7 VM that has .net v 1 installed on it. The plugins partially work but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. The one good thing about some of these XP plugins is that they are just web pages and java script so they are really easy to modify. I think it would be a good idea to prioritize vista and later plugins. It seems like Vista WMC had a lot more developer interest than WIn 7 WMC.

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DavidinCT

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#24

Post by DavidinCT » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:58 pm

jachin99 wrote:I was able to grab some xp plugins from a few of those links and installed on a Win 7 VM that has .net v 1 installed on it. The plugins partially work but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. The one good thing about some of these XP plugins is that they are just web pages and java script so they are really easy to modify. I think it would be a good idea to prioritize vista and later plugins. It seems like Vista WMC had a lot more developer interest than WIn 7 WMC.
XP WMC didn't have a HUGE following but, the larger community picked up when Vista WMC came out, as it could be fully used for a Nice DVR at the time. The Vista limitation needing a OEM PC to use cablecards held it back though (Yea, I had to buy a $1200 PC to use cablecards duing vista days...I did get $600 off it though and it had a ATX board so I transplanted it).

Let us know what apps you tested. There are a handful of XP WMC based apps that still work in 7 (and they might not work on 8 or 10). It could save some testing.

I had to rebuild my Windows 10 desktop (my primary Office machine is on Windows 10 for directx 12) as Windows 10 is a POS (yea, yea yea). Anyway, I got everything setup as I needed, I have a Windows 7 pro VM setup that is non persistent (So what ever I do to the OS, after I shut it down, it wipes everything back to the way it was, so it keeps nothing). I got some things tested but, not as much as I would like.

I'm off next week, I need to spend a good part of a day sorting through stuff... a LOT of stuff..
-Dave
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Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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#25

Post by jachin99 » Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:58 pm

Depending on how it was built, a lot of the XP plugins will load in newer versions of WMC but they won't work correctly. I believe working plugins are Hosted HTML applications, and these plugins are nothing more than HTML and Java script. Because XP had an older version of IE, the pages don't load correctly, and have sizing issues. On top of that, the feeds for most of the plugins are probably long gone. If someone wanted to update the Javascript for the 7MC version of IE, and correct dead links then these would probably work again. I remember testing Simply Weather, and My recipies (For XP, NOT the newer version I'm looking for) and they both had issues. These plugins don't need any kind of reverse engineering, and you can just edit the HTML files directly in order to change them.

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#26

Post by jachin99 » Wed Dec 20, 2017 5:09 pm

Also for the record I believe a modern (written in mcml) wmc plugin is a collection of .DLLs that are bolted on to wmc. You can actually see the difference while creating a plugin in visual studio by selecting class library vs. exe. If you try to write a wmc plugin and build it as a .exe vs tells you that you are missing an entry point. If you build it correctly as a class library then your entry point starts within wmc itself instead of windows. This is also reflected in the wmc command line switches where you can start a wmc add-on by using the GUIDs. Another example of this is when your building the xml registration file to add programs to the start menu. Here you define EITHER the addin ( wmc loads the additional .dll files) or run (wmc runs exe through command line) attributes

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#27

Post by DavidinCT » Wed Dec 20, 2017 7:55 pm

jachin99 wrote:Depending on how it was built, a lot of the XP plugins will load in newer versions of WMC but they won't work correctly. I believe working plugins are Hosted HTML applications, and these plugins are nothing more than HTML and Java script. Because XP had an older version of IE, the pages don't load correctly, and have sizing issues. On top of that, the feeds for most of the plugins are probably long gone. If someone wanted to update the Javascript for the 7MC version of IE, and correct dead links then these would probably work again. I remember testing Simply Weather, and My recipies (For XP, NOT the newer version I'm looking for) and they both had issues. These plugins don't need any kind of reverse engineering, and you can just edit the HTML files directly in order to change them.
I would almost put money down that a lot of XP WMC apps wont run on 7 is due to 32bit and 64bit. As MCE (Media Center Edition was what XP was called) was only available in a 32 bit version. Most people are running 64bit Windows 7 or 8.1 for MCE. For me I was the holdout for the longest time, I was running 32 bit Windows 7 till about 2 years ago. The only reason why I upgraded to 64bit is because I had 8gb of memory in my system(as we know 32 bit can only see 4gb)...and I had to take weeks to get some applications to run... (look up my posts for my VFD display using LCDwriter app under 64bit, I had to hack it to get it work, it was tricky for sure)

I know for a fact that some of the XP MCE apps I was still using stopped working once I used 64bit...

Maybe I should setup a 32bit Windows 7 for testing. If an app cant run under Windows 7 x64, give it a shot under x86/32 bit...
-Dave
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#28

Post by jachin99 » Thu Jan 25, 2018 8:06 pm

David, have you been able to make any progress on sharing your plugins?

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DavidinCT

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#29

Post by DavidinCT » Thu May 24, 2018 5:53 pm

What ever happened to this project ? Do we have a upload spot that we share here (tied into the WIKI) so as apps are fully tested (I have tested a bunch of them) we can put up ?
-Dave
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#30

Post by jachin99 » Fri May 25, 2018 5:19 pm

I have some hosting dedicated to things like this but its a simple free google drive share. I think as long as you don't need anything like statistics this will do the job. I believe the limit is 15 GB for their free account but I can do a small upgrade if neccessary. Let me know if you want to start uploading things, and I can find some way to host them at least. I have tryed out quite a few of them, and I think I have tried most everything that works with 7MC. I also have a machine I can test things on so let me know. As a suggestion we can upload plugins for Win 7 x64 first because it is the most common configuration. From there we can move onto 8/10 x64. If someone needs anything in particular, they can always ask as well.

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#31

Post by cassel11 » Wed May 30, 2018 4:10 am

I might have a bit to contribute if needed.

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#32

Post by jachin99 » Wed May 30, 2018 4:30 pm

Do you have plugins or storage space? To the forum mods, what would be needed in order to move forward with this? Are you looking for someone with storage? Do you need someone who can edit the wiki?

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holidayboy

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#33

Post by holidayboy » Wed May 30, 2018 5:38 pm

Apologies, this is something that I am in the process of organizing.

Unfortunately my work and family life has been getting in the way recently.

I hope to get the addin area up and running soon (probably in a kind of rough and ready mode to start with) so please bear with me.

Rob.

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TGB.tv - the one stop shop for the more discerning Media Center user.

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#34

Post by jachin99 » Thu May 31, 2018 2:10 am

Thanks for the update, and I'm looking forward to it :thumbup:

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#35

Post by DavidinCT » Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:19 pm

Thanks ! (sorry, not here every day as well)
-Dave
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#36

Post by holidayboy » Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:18 pm

Just a quick post to say that this is still on the horizon... time permitting :thumbup:
Rob.

TGB.tv - the one stop shop for the more discerning Media Center user.

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#37

Post by DavidinCT » Sun Sep 02, 2018 2:31 pm

holidayboy wrote: Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:18 pm Just a quick post to say that this is still on the horizon... time permitting :thumbup:
Completely understand ! Thanks for the update.
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#38

Post by Kick4U » Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:20 am

Any update on this? Wondering if there is anything I can help with. I have a computer that dual boots to Win 7 x86 and x64; would be happy to test add-ins help make this project happen.

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#39

Post by jachin99 » Sat Jan 05, 2019 5:33 pm

Im a little curious about this also.

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#40

Post by DavidinCT » Fri Jan 25, 2019 2:06 pm

Sure, I'll join in too... any news ?
-Dave
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