Technology
Media Center Extenders (MCX) can either be dedicated hardware devices, such as set top boxes or televisions, or software based implementations such as the Xbox 360. First generation hardware based devices were based on the Windows CE operating system whereas the second generation devices can use other embedded OSs such as Linux as well. The Extender creates its own user account on the host PC(MCX1, MCX2, etc.) and then uses a version of Fast User Switching to enable the use of the host computer and Extenders at the same time.
Version 1 Extenders only support Media Center versions up to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2 - they cannot support the version of Media Center incorporated in Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate Edition and later.
The server software, which runs on the host PC and streams the media, is built into Windows Media Center. An MCX device must be paired with the MCE software before use; this is done by pairing the MCE software with an identifying number generated by the MCX device.
The MCE software makes the user interface available via the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP, which is also used by Remote Desktop client). All processing done by the MCE software and plug-ins happen at the host computer; only the user interface is streamed to the MCX devices.
As such, the device can render the interface even though the Media Center-specific software (or the plug-ins) might not be installed there. However, the media files are streamed over a different protocol. To render the media, the Extender needs to have an implementation of the codec used to package the media locally installed on the Extender; having the codec on the host computer is not enough. Alternatively media can be trans-coded on the fly by the host computer to a codec that is supported by the Extender. In Windows 7 this is now a standard feature which will probably relieve Extender vendors in the future from having to include such a wide variety of codecs.
Read more about this topic: Windows Media Center Extender
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