Media Center Recorded TV on Your Zune – Simply and Automatically!!

Posted on 03 May 2007, at 11:39 pm, by Mitchell Oke

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The main reason I bought the Zune was so that I could watch TV and video on my train trip to university every day. I often have unwatched TV shows on my Media Center, so clearing them out during the trip to uni in the morning sounded like a good idea.

Until this application was released, I wasn’t interested in buying a Zune, or any other PMP device. When ZuneTVWatcher was released I ordered a Zune straight away (thanks Judie!). ZuneTVWatcher fills the baffling gap that Microsoft left in their Zune desktop software: the inability to convert and transfer DVR-MS files from Media Center to the Zune.

This little app runs in the system tray, and monitors your Recorded TV folder for changes. When I find a new show, it starts converting, but it is smart enough not to start converting before the show is finished. The converted file is placed in a folder of your choice, and you set the Zune software to monitor that folder for changes.

Plug your Zune in and all your recordings are copied over, ready for playback where ever you choose!! If you have a TV out cable (the ones for the iPod Video work perfectly) you can play the files onto a TV as well! While the files are low-resolution (320×240 or 320×180 for widescreen) they don’t actually look too bad on a TV. You might want to select the higher quality option in the settings though.

The original interface was a very bland grey windows with a few buttons and a listbox for the current files to be converted, but the latest version looks just like the Zune. While the buttons aren’t labelled, they do have tooltips, and once you know what they all do it’s easy the next time. “Back” is minimise, “Play” is scan for changes (if you are impatient and can’t wait a minute for it to do it automatically), “Centre” for settings, etc. It definitely looks right at home next to the Zune software, but it is minimized most of the time anyway.

For several weeks I tried out new builds of the app to get it working on my PC, and I now have it running just great on Vista. Michael, the man behind the code, was great in getting it fixed for me.

It’s not the most stable application yet though, as it crashes occasionally, and some shows don’t convert for no apparent reason, but it won’t blow up your PC, and for the majority it works very well. Conversions are very quick on my Core 2 Duo E6300, much less than real-time, probably closer to 3x real-time. It also doesn’t cause any problems when converting while two shows are recording in Media Centre.

The converted files even include the guide information stored in each DVR-MS files, and if you have more than one episode of a show, it groups them together. Sweet!!

So if like me you would like to get your Recorded TV on your Zune, head over the ZuneTVWatcher’s website and download it. It’s free, but if you like it send the developer a donation via PayPal.

(And yes I must confess, I do watch Letterman)

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