Manual

Subscribing to newsfeeds, podcasts and vodcasts

Media Center RSS Reader shows the same RSS feeds as Internet Explorer.
So you can use the standard functionality of Internet Explorer to subscribe to feeds:

• First, navigate to the web page that contains the RSS feed you want to subscribe to.
• Internet Explorer will show the page with a heading that looks like this:
  
• Click the encircled link called "Subscribe to this feed" to subscribe and to periodically receive updates of the feed's content.

Activating Media Center RSS Reader

Before you can make use of Media Center RSS Reader, you have to activate it.
Please do so the first time you start the application.

More information about activating our Media Center applications can be found here.

Reading news items, listening to podcasts and watching vodcasts

Now you can use Media Center RSS Reader to watch the content of the RSS feeds you've subscribe to in Internet Explorer, within the Media Center application.
To do so, you:

• go to the Start page of the Media Center application
• select the option called "Accessories"
• and click the option called "RSS News & Casts"

Now you'll see an overview of your (folders with) RSS feeds, which looks like this:

Select a folder or a feed, and press the "OK" button on your remote control.

If you selected a folder, you'll be taken to a page that shows the feeds that are available in that folder.
This page looks like this:

Select the feed you're interested in, and press the "OK" button on your remote control.

That will take you to a page that shows the items that are available in the feed you've selected.
This page looks like this:

Select the item you want to read, the podcast you want to listen to or the vodcast you want to watch, and press the "OK" button on your remote control.

Now you can see the contents of the item you selected.
It looks like this:

At the left side of the page you'll see the following buttons:

	Show map	if the item is geotagged, this button will take you to a map that shows the location at which the message was posted
	Play	if the item represents a podcast or vodcast, this button will start the playing of the attached audio or video
	Show page	use this button to view the web page that contains more details about the item
	Mark unread	use this button to mark the item "unread"

If the item is geotagged, you can use the "Show map" button to see the location at which the item was posted:

The pin shows the exact location at which the item was posted.

You can use the buttons on your remote to control the map view:

A good example of an RSS feed with geotagged items is the feed of USGS, that gives an overview of recent earthquakes.

Downloading attached podcasts or vodcasts

• To do so, first you have to go to the "Favorites Center" of Internet Explorer:
  
  
  
• Select the feed whose attached multimedia content you want to download, press the right mouse button and select the "Properties" option from the popup menu.
  Now you'll see the properties of the feed:
  
  
  
• Make sure the option called "Automatically download attached files" is checked.
  
  
• Since you probably don't want to spend all your harddisk space to downloaded podcasts or vodcasts, make sure to decrease the number of items that must be kept.

Installing codecs

If you have subscribed to a podcast or vodcast that distributes its content in a non-Microsoft format, you also have to make sure that you've installed the required codecs.

If your PC runs Windows 7, we recommend the following codecs:

• Haali Matroska Splitter
  for playing Matroska (MKV) videos
• Flash Video Splitter
  for playing flash videos
• AC3filter
  for playing multiple kinds of audio formats
• DirectVobSub
  for displaying subtitles

If your PC runs Windows Vista, we recommend the following codecs:

• FFDshow
  for the following video formats: XVid, DivX (3, 4 and 5), MS MPEG 4 (1, 2 and 3), 3IV, 3IVX, RMP4, DM4V, H.263, H.264, X.264, MJPEG, HuffYUV, CorePNG and MPNG
  and the following audio formats: Vorbis, AAC and FLAC
  (make sure you only use FFDshow for the file formats mentioned above!)
• QuickTime Alternative
  for QuickTime video and audio files
• Real Alternative
  for RealMedia video and audio files

Finally, make sure Windows recognizes and interprets the file extensions of all these media formats correctly.
To do so, download this ZIP file, open it, double click "Add file formats.reg" and press the "Yes" button.

Now you should be able to play almost any media file within Media Center!

If that is still not the case (like on my Windows Vista machine), go to another PC on which you've installed Nero Burning Rom (a trial version will do).
From that PC, copy the folder called "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead" to the same folder on your Media Center PC.
Then start a command prompt on your Media Center PC and enter the following commands:

• cd "\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\DSFilter"
• regsvr32 NDParser.ax

That should do the trick.