Dell Media Direct Question

When i first got my 1420, i formatted and loaded XP back on it and totally forgot about MediaDirect when i was installing XP because I've never heard of it. Now its been 2-3 months and I kind of want to check it out. I've already made a back up of my XP drive, do you guys think i can format my drive and make a new partition (how big) for MediaDirect and install that then reload my XP back up then continue installing of MediaDirect.

What do you guys think? Am I unclear? Is MediaDirect worth it? Can it play real player files?

Thanks

 

IMHO, no.
10

 

MediaDirect partition is 2.50GB

 

i love my media direct... i thought it was junk until i actually gave it a chance... i love it and imo its better than the media center for xp.

basically if you want music/ photos/ movies all u do is click 1 button and the media center pops out. just click what u want and ur rdy to go.. no need to look for winamp or songs or movies or etc one by one. its all there.

i love it so id install it if i was reinstalling my os.

 

thanks for the replies but will my method work? because i dont plan to format. Im just gonna format my xp so MediaDirect thinks i dont have an OS installed. Once MD installs then ill load my XP backup onto the computer again.

Can it play realplayer? im most concerned with this

 

It can't play real media files so don't bother trying.

 

IMO its not worth the trouble. Just a full screen media player running on a customized version of Windows XP (resembles Windows Media Center). Quick boot up is the only advantage. There are plenty of better media players for Windows having more features. As Harleyquin07 said, it wont support Real Media.

 

With a little tweaking it does play real media. It also plays DivX, XVid, Quicktime, etc.

 

You can make it play XVid, DivX and few other common file types by installing proper codecs. But AFAIK not real video files. Simply installing the Real codec (with Real Alternative) didn't work (at least for me, when I tried several months ago before I gave it up); care to explain how ?

 

You need to tell MediaDirect to display files with .RM and .MOV extensions.

Boot into your main O/S where you must have the windows version of MediaDirect installed, and navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\[folder]>\Local Settings\Application Data\MediaDirect (where [folder] is your default admin folder).

Open the Setting.ini file and you'll find a segment like this:

[Media Format]
music = ['.WAV', '.MP3', '.WMA', '.ASF']
photo = ['.BMP', '.JPG', '.JPEG', '.PNG']
pptview = ['.PPT', '.POT', '.PPS']
video = ['.MPEG2', '.MPG2', '.AVI', '.ASF', '.MPG', '.MPE', '.MPEG', '.WMV', '.DVR-MS']
audio = ['.WAV', '.MP3', '.WMA', '.ASF']

Modify the video= line to include the additional filetypes:

[Media Format]
music = ['.WAV', '.MP3', '.WMA', '.ASF']
photo = ['.BMP', '.JPG', '.JPEG', '.PNG']
pptview = ['.PPT', '.POT', '.PPS']
video = ['.MPEG2', '.MPG2', '.AVI', '.ASF', '.MPG', '.MPE', '.MPEG', '.WMV', '.DVR-MS', '.RM', '.MOV']
audio = ['.WAV', '.MP3', '.WMA', '.ASF']

When you reboot into the standalone media-direct application the settings file is copied over from your main drive and used by the application. If it doesn't seem to work then there are about 3 copies of the setttings.ini file on the mediadirect partion that may need to be altered instead. Either way, that file determines which filetypes are displayed.

Remember to exit the MediaDirect application when in standalone mode to force the INI file to be re-read, using the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys and ending the task.

Even if you install the RM codec MediaDirect will still not play the file because it tries to use the internal Cyberlink video decoder. You need to modify the CLDShowX.ini file in the c:\program files\dell\mediadirect\kernel\video folder (on both the O/S and MediaDirect partitions) to prevent the default codec being used.

Open the file and comment out this line:
4749C27E-52BE-4918-8D1B-F9A3AF1A42C1=CLSID_CLVSD ;CLVsd.ax

So it becomes:
;4749C27E-52BE-4918-8D1B-F9A3AF1A42C1=CLSID_CLVSD ;CLVsd.ax

The default system codecs are then used. I'm still trying to get DVD playback and RM/MOV codecs working together. Please post if you have any luck with this.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try when I get my new M1330.

 

Does anyone have any info where I can download MediDirect reinstall Cd for Vostro 1500?

I'd already contacted Dell where I was redirected to a local phone number where I got an e-mail address but since then there is no reply to my e-mail. :-(

Can anybody help?

 

Did it not come with the disk? Never mind which version is it you after?
Do a search on BT and I'm not talking Bluetooth THERE up there..
Still just ring Tec support and ask for the disk to be sent out..That is what I did as my rig came with v3.3 and I wanted v3.0 which they shipped out to me..@ no cost.