Dev for MCE without MCE installed??

[blindstagger]

Hi,

First time poster looking for a little guidance

I'd like to put together an MCE machine, but I've got all my tunes catalogued in iTunes for syncing with my iPod, so would like to continue using iTunes as the "back-end" for serving up the tunes. I've had a scout about, but it doesn't look like there's anything out there that'll hook into the iTunes library and serve up the songs (including tag/rating/art details).

I'd like to work on a plugin to do this, but I don't yet have a machine with MCE installed. Is it possible to develop and test plugins (within reason) without having MCE as the OS on the development machine? I've found a very small sample of VB.Net code (this would be my preferred option, although C# is also a possibility), but this uses the Microsoft.MediaCenter.AddIn namespace, which I don't have access to. Can this be registered on a WinXP machine to allow the code to compile, and if so, is there a way to test the code once it's compiled (via an emulator or such like)?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this subject, as I'm still fumbling in the dark.

Also, if anyone knows of any good tutorials for writing MCE plugins, based on VB.Net, could you point me in their direction?

Cheers!

[Tak]

Hi,

What format is your music library in at the moment?

If it's already in mp3 or something that Windows Media Player can play then you could just set up Windows Media Player to share the iTunes music library folders and then your iTunes library should be available to MCE with the main tags shared as well?

Not installed iTunes on my MCE machine at home but have iTunes and WMP running happily together off the same library on my laptop.

I'm sure there'll still be some challenges as I'm not sure how iTunes handles the artwork etc. but it's probably easier than building a plugin???

Hope that helps,

Tak

[sof]

I think there is something around called HPitunes that people have used, it comes with the hp media centres but I'm sure I've seen it discussed here that people have sourced it elsewhere.

Cheers sof

*Edit* - check the downloads section someone has uploaded it there, it is called HP Tunes.

[blindstagger]

Thanks for the replies guys.

My library is mainly AAC at the moment, and I don't really want to re-rip all my CDs (over 400) in a WMP-friendly format.

I had heard of hpTunes, but some comments I saw said it was quite restrictive in what it lets you do (can't remember the specifics). It was reading those comments that made me think it'd be good to write a plugin from scratch so it will do exactly what I want to do.

The only problem with that, though, is that I don't have MCE (yet). Is there a way to test plugins on Windows XP (this would also let me test hpTunes to see if it does what I need).

Cheers!

[monster]

blindstagger if u get hold of the Microsoft.MediaCenter.dll u will be able to use the namespace and complie but no real testing tho.

[blindstagger]

Thanks Monster. I'll give it a go