Talking about DVDs; if you have a couple of (legally) ripped DVDs on your Windows Media Center Edition you can now access these DVDs wireless as well - straight from your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone! During the past weeks, I played with a couple of Beta builds of Doug Berrett' WebGuide 4.1 (please see the::unwired's review of WebGuide4 Mobile here) and all I can say is, that it is a fantastic addition fort every Windows (Vista or XP) Media Center Edition. Not only it lets you place-shift your live TV, this DVD streaming is the killer (as long as your DSL upload is broad enought and you have at least a UMTS connection for your Windows Mobile device).

To see the whole list of new features - head over to the::placeshift but here are the major features for the mobile version:

• Added streaming DVD functionality for non-encrypted DVD's stored in folders.
  • store all of the video_ts files in a folder with a "folder.jpg" to use as cover art
  • recognized as full DVD offering titles/chapters/menus
  • note that direct-show doesn't show the menu highlights when streaming, so you can also use the title/chapter list.
• Added DVD ISO mounting via Daemon Tools
• Added "dvdid.xml" support for cover art and DVD info
• Modified DVD stream to pick AC3 stream with more than 2 channels (was selecting a silent channel sometimes)
• Added "Now Playing" page to Mobile section to allow for transport controls and chapter list while streaming
• Added 4x3, 16x9 and audio-only streaming profiles
• Added streaming audio to mobile (to handle high-bitrate of MP3->WMA conversion)
• Added videos/DVD streaming to mobile
• Automatically goes to "now playing" screen before launching mobile stream
• Fixed mobile permission issue where user wasn't allowed to login with restricted permissions
• Fixed mobile auto-login.
• Cleaned up font sizes in mobile pages
• Improved streaming of Divx/Xvid files
• Added mobile setting to change the ASX stream extension (normally WVX, but can be changed to ASX for other apps that don't recognize WVX (for instance Kinoma on Palm)

As I said, I was playing and testing v4.1 a lot during the last weeks and it's definitely a major improvement, especially the DVD streaming functionality which gives your place-shift access to your DVD collection from wherever your are.

The price of the full version of WebGuide4 stays unchanged - US$ 18 only! WebGuide 4.1 is available (and requires) for Windows Vista Media Center and Windows XP Media Center Edition. It's not running stand-alone.

Cheers ~ Arne