Actually, it’s worse than that; it tries<\/em> to display HD content within MC but fails miserably yet refuses to fail back to SD. \u00a0I could have\u00a0tolerated\u00a0it if there was a way to disable HD within the Netflix MC add-in but alas, there is not. \u00a0I was forced to use IE to watch Netflix HD streaming content and toggle the HD off.<\/p>\n This was a long way of saying that my frustration level finally exceeded my\u00a0laziness\u00a0and I built a replacement MCE machine. \u00a0Nothing fancy, in fact I built it from bits I had laying around from previous projects\/consulting gigs (Intel DN2800MT, 80GB SSD, 2GB RAM, Win7 HomePrem, 1TB external USB drive).<\/p>\n I use Growl for Windows<\/a> to display the incoming CallerID information when a telephone call comes in. \u00a0I use it on all my desktop PCs and on the Media Center machine. \u00a0It works great with the standard bits on desktop machines but because Media Center takes over the display it would not work. \u00a0Google made short work of the problem by\u00a0providing\u00a0me a link to a solution<\/a>. \u00a0Many thanks to Treas0on<\/a>, whomever you are.<\/p>\n I have been using that code on my old machine for quite awhile and wanted it on the new one also. \u00a0I ran into a bit of trouble when I tried to run the install script for the Media Center add-in portion; it could not find gacutil.exe. \u00a0Gacutil is a bit of .NET mumbo-jumbo that is included with old versions (1.x, 2.x) of the framework but not the 4.x version I had installed on my new machine. \u00a0Not wanting to install the old versions simply to get that single utility I was able to find a source to download it<\/a>. \u00a0I dropped it directly into the MCE-Install directory within C:\\Windows\\ehome.<\/p>\n Another key bit of info. that is missing from Treas0n’s original post is that you must run the install script with Administrator\u00a0privileges. \u00a0Selecting ‘Run As Administrator’ didn’t seem to do it either so I manually started a CMD process as Administrator, cd’d over to C:\\Windows\\ehome\\MCE-Install and ran it from there. \u00a0JOY!<\/p>\n For those of you wondering how I get the CallerID info. into a Growl notification I use a bit of custom code running on my Asterisk <\/a>based home PBX. \u00a0What’s that you say? \u00a0You don’t have your own PBX running at your house? \u00a0It’s what all the cool geeks are doing these days. \u00a0\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prologue I love me my Media Center. \u00a0We use it everyday as our main entertainment consumption (read: TV\/Movie viewing)\u00a0vehicle. \u00a0However, the HP Media Center m480n, despite many upgrades over time, suffers from from some serious shortcomings; random crashes,\u00a0WinRot,\u00a0inconsistent\u00a0digital audio, and the killer for me, the inability to display HD Netflix streaming titles within MC. Actually, … Continue reading How to display Growl for Windows (CallerID info) alerts within Windows Media Center<\/span> Finally, To The Point<\/h6>\n
![\"Growl](\"http:\/\/www.streamingmeemee.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Growl_64x64.png\")
<\/a>Epilogue<\/h6>\n
![\"Asterisk](\"http:\/\/www.streamingmeemee.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/asterisk-logo.gif\"){kind=logo}
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