MceFM released: Last.fm addin for Windows Media Center
March 17, 2008
Over the last few months I’ve been working on an addin to Windows Media Center which lets you listen to Last.fm based off of the artists in your music collection (you can also enter arbitrary artists names etc.).
I wanted it to work when the user wasn’t running the MceFM application within Media Center, which meant creating a background application and a normal application. That way you can listen to songs and watch your photo collection (for example).
Also, the Last.fm music streams don’t include the tags normally included in mp3 files, which let you see the track name, artist, album name, etc. So what I did was to dynamically add these tags to the stream, which means that Media Center will shown all that information correctly.
All in all, a lot of fun to develop. Now I just need to see if anyone cares :-)
More at http://www.mcefm.com/
March 17, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Great idea, just blogging it now :)
March 17, 2008 at 12:38 pm
[...] your a Last.fm user you will like the new addon for Windows Media Center by Damian Mehers. MceFRM is a a Last.FM addon Vista Media Center with features like using the More option from Media [...]
March 18, 2008 at 4:47 pm
[...] Includes scheduler, batch encoding, simple UI, and options for delete DVR-MS files after conversion.MceFM is a new plug-in that brings Last.fm to Media Center based off of the artists in your music library. It’s [...]
March 22, 2008 at 6:39 pm
[...] new add-in was launched earlier this week by Damian Meher, the author of the new toy for Media Center owners. Not only do you get Last.fm streaming, but it [...]
March 24, 2008 at 7:07 pm
[...] If you’ve been a long-time user of Last.fm on your PC (like I have), you’ll be happy to learn that you can bring the experience to your living room with MceFM for Windows Media Center on Vista. Once the add-in is installed, all one needs to do is type in the name of the “artist” or “tag” they’d like to hear similar music to and MceFM cues up the related tracks, including cover art and summary metadata. What’s more, users don’t have to stay in the MceFM interface to enjoy the music, so, for example, you can have last.fm playing in the background while presenting a photo sideshow on screen. [via] [...]
May 16, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Damian: Would you be willing to work with Jason of the uSirius project to figure out a way to stream Sirius to MCE?
It seems like together you both have done all the work that would be required…
uSirius is responsible for logging into the sirius web servers and it in turn serves standard audio feeds to a local network.
If LastFM could be pointed to a local address and port that uSirius is running on and have it play the streams, that would rock! I’m sure it is more difficult than that, but it seems like both major challenges are done between the two programs…. just getting them to talk to eachother or perhaps helping Jason write his own version of LastFM for uSirius instead… anything would be helpful.
June 5, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Hi Damian,
your MCE plugin is really great stuff!
I was looking since ages for a working solution. Tried LastFMCE and many further things, but yours is definitely the best of all last.FM integrations for MCE.
Congratulations and best regards from Germany
moobekk
BTW: Do you know the last.fm integration of MediaPortal?
June 24, 2008 at 10:43 pm
[...] Damian Mehers let me know that version 1.0 has been officially launched and I am going to be giving away a full licences of MceFM later this week, but only via Twitter :) [...]
July 14, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Check out this link over at thegreenbutton.com. I figured out how to get Sirius to play through MCE2005.
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/272223.aspx