I'm used to companies offering less than stellar customer care in this age of low-cost, low-margin business. So when a company goes above and beyond to take care of their customers, it get my attention.

Everyone pretty much know that the High Definition Disc Format war would end one format would become obsolete. Which is why I'm surprised that Busy Buy and Circuit City are both compensating customer who choose the losing format. Best Buy will be giving a $50 giftcard to anyone who purchased a HD-DVD Player prior to February 23, 2008 (just go to BestBuyTradein.com and register.)

Circuit City has taken a different approach, extending the return period for player by "several months." So the customer can return the player for full credit, but obviously will be unable to play any HD-DVD movies they purchased as they will no longer have a player. It's interesting that Bust Buy officially announced this while Circuit City made this an unofficial policy.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart, the low-cost advocate of HD-DVD, is offering their customers nothing.

Netflix, which whom I've been a customer for 8 years, had a massive outage last Monday, lasting about 12 hours. As a result, they were unable to ship the two movies I was to receive until Tuesday. A 1 day delay, not a big deal. I was just glad that they acknowledged and apologized for the the problem. But I was elated when they went above and beyond by offering a 10% discount on my fees for the month.

Since it's tax time, I feel the need to complain about Intuit TurboTax. The software is great, but the price gouging is terrible. They find every way possible to charge the customer more, right up to the unreasonable filing fees. I generally have faith in the free market, but the TurboTax / Tax Cut dual-opoly is not yielding the fruit competition should. I'm just hoping that these companies learn something from Bust Buy, Circuit City, and Netflix about doing what is right for their customers.

I firmly believe in paying for the movies you own.  In doing so, I believe you should be able to move them to your media server and play them back however you please.  BD+ protection (DRM) prevented this with recent Blu-Ray titles, but latest version of Slysoft's AnyDVD HD overcomes this limitation.

Here is the update notification:

6.4.0.0 2008-03-19

• New (Blu-ray): Removes the BD+ protection from Blu-ray discs! (for increased compatibility with titles released by Twentieth Century Fox )
• New (Blu-ray): Added option to enable / disable BD+ removal
• New (DVD): AnyDVD ripper no longer uses the Windows filesystem, it has now its own UDF parser / reader. Discs which cannot be read by Windows can now be copied with the AnyDVD ripper.
• Fix (Blu-ray): Black display with some BD discs, e.g., "Layer Cake", second release, "The Fugitive", "Wild Things" (all Region B)
• Fix (DVD): Small bugfix in "repairing defective disc structure" function of AnyDVD ripper
• Fix (DVD): Problems with some Arccos protected titles, e.g. "The Grudge", R1, US
• Some minor fixes and improvements
• Updated languages

The update is free for all registered customers, of course. Just install the new version on top of your current version, regardless which version you have installed: http://www.slysoft.com/download.html

Update 8-Apr-2008: Chris Lanier just posted about the program MC Menu Customizer, which automates editing of the start menu. A great alternative to what is posted below!

I recently posted about automatically launching plugins within Vista Media Center. I just came across another improvement that allows editing the order and contents of the Vista Media Center start menu. This, combined with automatic plug-in launching, goes a long way toward giving whatever startup experience you desire.

Quoting bluebucket on The Green Button forums:

I've found a way to edit the standard start menu items in Vista Media Center, but its a hack.

Using this hack I've successfully removed items and even entire strips from the start menu. I suspect that its also possible to change the position of menu items, but I haven't tried yet.

You'll need a resource editor like ResourceTuner from HeavenTools.com.

1. Make a backup of the %SYSTEMROOT%\ehome\ehres.dll
2. Change the security settings of the %SYSTEMROOT%\ehome\ehres.dll to give yourself ownership of the dll. Afterwards change the file rights to full control. If you're running with UAC, then you might need to do some more steps here.
3. Open the ehres.dll in the ResourceTuner.
4. Expand the HTML node

Now the files we're interested in are among others:

STARTMENU.XML - defines the main start menu stripes
SM.ACTIVITIES.XML - defines the menu items under the Task menu
SM.MUSIC.XML - defines the menu items under the Music menu
SM.PICTURES.XML - defines the menu items under the Pictures & Video menu
SM.TV.XML - defines the menu under the Tv menu

5. Choose SM.MUSIC.XML for example, rightclick the node and select Edit Resource. The XML file opens.
6. Now remove the XML tags defining the menu items you do not want. Alternatively make the element into a comment by changing the tag to <!– old tag content –>. It might take a while to get an overview of the structure and maybe some trial and error before the logic of the xml file sinks in. Do not remove the <home:App /> elements though.
7. When you're happy with the changes, click Ok and accept the changes.
8. Select Save As and select the original file (overwriting the existing).
9. Open Vista Media Center and check that the changes work.

Now, since this is a hack, I take no responsibility of how you might break Vista Media Center, destroy your computer or otherwise corrupt the world using this hack.
Also note, that a software update might overwrite your hacked ehres.dll file effectively removing your changes.

For me, Brian Binnerup's My Movies plugin is the most important function of Vista Media Center. It's so useful that I want it to be the default start page every time I turn-on my Vista Media Center PC.

I couldn't figure out how to do that, and this I came across this post on TheGreenButton forums. Here are the details on launching a Media Center plug-in from via the startup folder or from a key on your remote control.

Associate Media Center Plug ins with the Media Center Application:

• Open My Computer or Explorer and navigate to: C:\Program Files\MCE\My Movies\
• Right click on the file MyMovies.mcl
• From the menu choose Open With and choose Media Center.
  • Make sure the checkbox for "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" is checked.

Option 1: Set the Plugin to Automatically Launch when the computer boots:

• Right click on the file C:\Program Files\MCE\My Movies\MyMovies.mcl and create a shortcut
• Copy that shortcut to the Startup folder in the Windows Start menu

Option 2: Have the asterisk key on the remote launch the plug-in:

• Down load a program called HotkeyP (free / open source)
• In the program add a new Hotkey:
  • Check the box for the Shift button
  • In the input box type: 8
  • In the Command input type or navigate to: C:\Program Files\MCE\My Movies\MyMovies.mcl
  • Click OK to save

HotkeyP will need to be running in the System tray, and Now when you press the Asterisks key it will open My Movies.

If you are using the Harmony 880 remote, you can add a button to the LCD display window and name it My Movies. This is necessary because these remotes do not have an Asterisk Key.

Option 3:  Have the Media Center Button or some other dedicated button lauch the plugin
The key c0mbination of Windows logo key+ALT+ENTER launches Windows Media Center. Assign this hotkey to launch the Media Center plugin file instead. For a list of all available keyboard shortcuts in Media Center, see the Microsoft article.