I told you about WebGuide4 and how it provides an excellent alternative for Orb. Now the developer has made available a Vista Sidebar Gadget to tie into WebGuide.

The gadget gives you instant access to your WebGuide and Media Center information right from the desktop. It makes a great addition to the software.

If you're familiar with Softsled, this is the code name for a software based version of Media Center Extender. It would be nice to have Softsled, but today I found out about an alternative; WebGuide. This software runs on Vista and provides your Vista Media Center with Extender like functionality via a Web browser. If you're familiar with Orb, then WebGuide is something similar. I like WebGuide< ...

XM subscribers, now you have XM Radio on Vista Media Center. XM officially announced the launch today in conjunction with the Vista release.

"XM is pleased to be extending its strategic relationship with Microsoft with the inclusion of XM Radio Online in Windows Vista," said My-Chau Nguyen, XM senior vice president for marketing programs and operations. "By working with Microsoft, we are expanding the availability of XM Radio Online, which provides an extraordinary variety of music choices, talk radio options, and exclusive programming such as ' ...

Media Center Vista users, the plug-ins are starting to come in. Now you can download RocketBoom for Vista Media Center. View RocketBoom video blogs via your Vista Media Center interface.

Visit MCESoft for the free download...

Microsoft adds the Extended Support phase to two consumer products, providing customers with an additional five years of support.

With the addition of Extended Support, the support life cycle for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition will include a total of five years of Mainstream Support (until April 2009) and five years of Extended Support, matching the support policy provided for Windows XP Professional.

VidaBox has the Media Center system for those who don't want to build their own. This beauty contains both HD DVD and Blu-ray drives, dual CableCards, and 3TB of RAID 5 storage. This makes one nice addition to the media room. It's going to set you back a few grand, but it's only money, right?

Unfortunately our old Media Center Extenders for XP will no longer work once our Media Center PC is upgraded to Vista. There are some options though. The Xbox 360 supports both Media Center XP and Media Center Vista. In October Linksys announced that they will be producing a new Vista Extender called the DP1600 which includes Scart, composite, S-Video, component, HDMI, optical and SPIDF connections, as well as an Ethernet and 802.11 b/g wireless.

Now HP has entered in the Vista Extender market (makes sense since Links ...

For those of you who want to know what your hardware is doing, System Monitor 1.1 is now available for download. This software is basically a MCE wrapper for SmartFan which is a hardware monitor. There are versions of System Monitor for both XP and < ...

Wavexpress is releasing a version of TVTonic for Windows Vista Media Center. With TVTonic you'll be able to view online media via your Media Center interface on your Vista PC.

Some of the features provided by TVTonic:

One Voice Technologies, Inc., developer of 4th Generation voice solutions for the Telecom and Interactive Multimedia markets, today announced at the 2007 International CES tradeshow that it is making publicly available a beta test of its new Media Center Communicator™ v3 for Microsoft Windows Vista. To participate in the beta testing program please send an email with your contact information to mccsales@onev.com.

For more information, please visit http://www.onev.com/mcc& ...

Hauppauge has launched several new WinTV cards for your Media Center experience on Vista.

The new WinTV products for Vista Media Center are:

• WinTV-NOVA-TD-500—For the European and Asian markets, WinTV-NOVA-TD-500 is a dual tuner digital DVB-T TV tuner board that can be used in either a dual tuner or diversity configuration. Diversity uses two tuners to give better digital TV reception on a single DVB-T digital channel, while the dual tuner mode enables you to watch one digital TV channel while recording another digital channel.

Here's a nice looking machine for your Media Center PC. Newly announced by Shuttle the Shuttle XPC mini X 200 sports a hybrid TV tuner and dual monitor support.

Other features of the XPC mini X 200 are:

• Barely 55 mm tall
• Supports powerful mobile processors such as Intel Core2 Duo, Intel Core Duo or Celeron M
• Integrated Intel graphics engine with multi monitor support and DVI-out
• Infrared remote control with built-in receiver in the front panel
• Hyb ...

Another new feature for Vista Media Center users is Windows Live for TV (formally known as 'Orbit') has gone beta.

All the functionality of Windows Live from the comfort of your Media Center PC. Talk with friends via chat, voice, or make a phone call.

To find out more visit the official weblog of the project.

CMP the folks who bring you several tech magazines has an article by Bill O'Brian on how to upgrade to Media Center. It's a pretty good overview covering the XP version of Media Center.