Vista Media Center update for HP's MediaSmart HDTVs now available

Owners of HP's older MediaSmart HDTVs, your sometime is now as Chris Lanier reports the company's posted the long-awaited Vista Media Center Extender update. The SL4278N and SL4778N model TVs should prompt for the update automatically if they're connected to the internet, and afterwards connect to your fully patched Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition machine and access your Media Center library (DivX, Xvid, h.264, MPEG-2 and WMV of course), live TV, recorded TV or other features directly through the TV. Check out HP's support page for a full walkthrough on the process and keep your Windows Media Center remote close by.

[Via Chris Lanier, HP press release]

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 10:04AM]

wow..these do h.264 aswell??...sounds awesome..i know this is a lil off topic so pls dnt flame me, but does anyone know if h.264 is possible via ps3 aswell?? natively, not using on the fly encoding (ex tversity), because that just leaves u with a crippled video that u cant FF RW etc...

[TheCow5 Posted Apr 17th 2008 10:21AM]

Hi, a question.
h.264 is simply a compression scheme and should not indicate it supports .MKV files, am I correct?

If only one of these HDTV companies would simply add PopcornHour to there HDTV like this one life would be even better.

[spasewalkr Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:47AM]

you're exactly correct. mkv is just a container much like .mov and .avi

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 10:33AM]

my vista ultimate records all my favorite shows. how do i access those shows via wifi from a laptop with just windows XP???

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:54AM]

you can share your Recorded TV folder over the network so your XP laptop can access it -- then the DVR-MS files just play in windows Media Player

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:28AM]

just enable file sharing

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:59AM]

wow. i didnt know it was that easy! thanks!
hope the wifi is fast enough to stream some 1080i stuffs...

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:25AM]

So, a tv with networked capabilities to Media Center, now I don't have to strain my 360 so much anymore...My question is, what's the picture look like? Not all 1080p TVs are created equal you know...

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:52AM]

You can read up on some impressions of the panel at its 'pfficial thread' here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=913903&goto=newpost

I have one and I had to tune it but I love it. Absolutely love the 'extender' aspect.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 17th 2008 11:56AM]

I have this TV and i think the picture quality is really good. I actually have my 360 attached to it for now, just waiting for the update.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 24th 2008 3:14PM]

wonder if I could jerryrig this to work with http://freetube.110mb.com or demotv.org