Manual
 

Getting a SIP account

Before you start installing MCE SIP Phone, first get yourself a (free) SIP account.
You can get one at SIPphone.com.
 

Installation

When you install MCE SIP Phone, you actually install two applications:

  • MCE SIP Phone
    This application provides video conferencing functionality within the environment of the Media Center application.
  • MCE SIP Phone for Windows XP
    This is a stand-alone application for having video conferences outside of the Media Center application.
    This application can be installed on any Windows XP machine. 

Even when your focus is on having video conferences from within Media Center, you're going to need the other application for things like defining your contacts.
Let's have a closer look.
 

MCE SIP Phone for Windows XP

When you start the MCE SIP Phone for Windows XP application, you'll get a window that looks like this:

The toolbar

The toolbar at the top of the window provides access to all main functions of the application:

Press this button to logon to your SIP service.

When you press this button, you'll see the logon screen:

Here you can enter:

  • Your name, as it will be shown to other users you're going to call.
  • The username (or probably: the SIP phone number) of your SIP account.
  • The password for your SIP account.
  • The name of the SIP server.
  • The protocol you want to use for connecting to your SIP server.
    (you probably don't want to change this)
  • The authentication method you want to use when connecting to your SIP server.
    (you probably don't want to change this either)

Note:
The parameters you enter in this screen will also be used when logging in with the Media Center version of MCE SIP Phone.

or
 Use these buttons to connect to or disconnect from one of your contacts.
If you want to make a video call, first select the person you want to call in the contact overview, then press the (green) button.

Once the application tries to establish the connection, the button will turn red.
Press the red button to either cancel the process of establishing the connection, or to disconnect an established connection.
Press this button to add a person to the overview of contacts.

If you press it, you will see the following window:

Here you can enter:

  • The name of the person.
  • The SIP address of the person.
    (which should be something like "12345@proxy01.sipphone.com")
By pressing this button, the person that is currently selected in the contacts overview will be removed from that overview.
By pressing this button, you will get a screen which you can use to search a certain person in the directory of your SIP service provider.
Since this function does not (yet) work correctly, it is not further described at this moment.
Once a connection is established, you can toggle this button to switch off or on the sending of your audio.
By default audio is sent the moment the connection is established.
Once a connection is established, you can toggle this button to switch on or off the sending of your video.
By default video is not sent until you press this button.

Note:
The latter goes for the person you're calling as well. So at first neither of you will see incoming video!
Before you try to send audio of video, first use this button to specify which video and audio devices you want to use with MCE SIP Phone.

The contacts overview

The contacts overview shows the names of the contacts you added.
Each name is accompanied by an image that represents the status of the contact, i.e. whether the contact is online.

This picture means that the contact is online.
This picture means that the contact is not online.

The contact status information is updated every 5 minutes.

If you want to start a video conversation with one of the contacts, just select him/her in the overview and press this button in the toolbar:

The menu

Almost all of the items you find in the menu of the MCE SIP Phone application correspond to one of the buttons in the toolbar.

One menu item needs to be mentioned, though: "Manage contacts who monitor my status" from the "View" menu.
If you click this menu item, the following window will appear:

Whenever someone else adds you as a contact in his/her MCE SIP Phone, you will be asked if you want to allow this person to see your online status.
If you say yes, that person will automatically be added to your contacts overview and he/she will appear in the window shown above with a green image.
If you say no, the person will also be shown in this window, but with a red image.

If you change your mind about allowing someone else to monitor your online status, you can use the buttons in this window:

Allow With this button you can allow a person to monitor your online status.
Deny With this button you can deny a person to monitor your online status.
Remove With this button you can remove the person from this overview.
The next time that person tries to see your online status, you will be asked again if you want to allow that or not.

Note:
A small warning is in place here: if you deny someone the right to monitor your online status, that person will not be able to call you either!
This is something to be enhanced in a future version.
 

MCE SIP Phone for Windows XP Media Center Edition

Once you got used to working with MCE SIP Phone for Windows XP, you will have no problems using the Media Center version of this application, since it provides a subset of the functionality described above.

So, one the Start page of MCE select the option "More programs" and then select the "My internet phone" application.
Then you'll see this page:

It shows the names of your contacts and their online status.

If you select a contact and press the "Ok" button on your remote control, you'll see the following page:

Now press the "Call" button to establish a connection. That will bring you to this page:

The buttons on this page have similar functionality as in the XP application:

Once a connection is established, you can toggle this button to switch on or off the sending of your video.
By default video is not sent until you press this button.

Note:
The latter goes for the person you're calling as well. So at first neither of you will see incoming video!
Once a connection is established, you can toggle this button to switch off or on the sending of your audio.
By default audio is sent the moment the connection is established.
Press this button to either cancel the process of establishing the connection, or to disconnect an established connection.

Important issues

MCE SIP Phone is based upon the Real-time Communications library by Microsoft.
One of the limitations of that library is that it does not support many codecs (codecs are used to encode/decode your audio and video streams before sending them over the internet).
The consequence of this is that if someone else tries to call you with other SIP software than MCE SIP Phone, the connection will be established but there is a good chance that both of you will not be able to see or here each other.

Finally, with "internet phone" software there's always a problem that someone else's PC must be able to communicate with your PC, passing routers, firewall etc.
To minimize the chance that someone else can't reach your PC, make sure that:

  • You enable "Universal plug-and-play" on your PC, in your PC's firewall and on your (ADSL or cable) modem.
  • You press the "unblock" button the first time you start MCE SIP Phone and the firewall software asks you if MCE SIP Phone should be allowed to pass the firewall.