Windows Media Center RSS 2.0
 Tuesday, February 14, 2006

I sat down with a piece of graph paper at McDonalds today for lunch (Value Meal #2 which is a Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese sans onions, fries, Coca-Cola, plus three chocolate chip cookies) to sketch out the Mix06 project.

I named the app 'Q' until we can come up with something better. It can stand for a couple of things which seem to be appropriate: cue and queue.

Here is a sneak preview of the feature set / goals along with priority.

• Browse potential and subscribed content. (p1)
• Subscribe to content. (p1)
• Download content to local machine. (p1)
• Play content from local machine. (p1)
• Support RSS 2.0 required Channel elements. (p1)
   Title, Link, Description
• Support RSS 2.0 required Item element. (p1)
   Title (or Description)
• Support RSS 2.0 Item optional elements required for app to function. (p1)
   Enclosure (+ 3 required attributes of location, size and mime type).
   GUID (unique string for feed)

• Support optional elements of RSS 2.0 Channel. (p2)
   Language, copyright, image (+ 3 required elements of url, title and link), category
• Support optional elements of RSS 2.0 Item. (p2)
   Description, author, category, pubDate

• Manage subscriptions. (p3)
• Support Media Center native formats for playback: WMA, MP3, WMV, MPEG1, MPEG2 (p3)
   We get this for free, but I'm spelling it out anyway so we know specifically what formats will be supported.

Priority Legend

p1 = Must Have
p2 = Nice To Have
p3 = Cool if we get, but won't go above and beyond to implement.

There will be some expansion of these features once we start getting into the UI design -- for example, browse will probably include some notion of grouping / categorization. I hope to publish the full spec before the end of the week.

Keep the comments / feature requests coming -- we haven't locked anything down yet so there is still time to add or change features.

Categories: Media Center Application Design | Mix | Comments [3] | # | Posted on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 7:07:16 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)   
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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

© Copyright 2008 Charlie Owen

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