mceAuction – eBay on your TV screen

Access eBay via Microsoft’s Windows Media Center

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Just imagine sitting on your couch in the living room with your remote in the hand while you search, browse, bid or buy on eBay®! This is exactly, what mceAuction does. It brings eBay to your living room on your Microsoft Windows Media Center (2005, Vista or 7).

Microsoft Windows Media Center adds entertainment-functionality like TV recording, DVD playback, all your music, photos, and videos, radio, Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) and much more to your PC in the living room… The hardware is not that expensive as you may think. Prebuilt systems (with Windows Media Center installed) that look good in your living room and are very silent are sold at your favorite online store.

Two features in this software are absolutely new and unique:

#1: Get notifications directly on your TV (whatever you just do with your Media Center like watching live TV, watching a DVD, and so on) if…

items you are watching in “my eBay” end in a few minutes
(minutes before alert is choosable)
you got outbid in an auction
someone has bought an item from your auctions
an auction for an item you are selling will end in a few minutes (minutes choosable)

You will never miss the end of an auction again because you are watching TV!

#2: See item’s location in Google Maps®:

You can see every item’s location worldwide in a map, in a satellite map or in hybrid view (satellite with map overlay). No additional software needs to be installed. You can zoom and pan the map just with your remote control to see the vicinity of the item’s location.

This works for every auction in the world if the seller has entered a reasonable item location that can be located by Google Maps®.

mceAuction covers the main areas of eBay®.
You can search for an auction (You can select the main eBay category to search)…

…or just browse in the eBay categories and look what other people sell.

All relevant information of an item is shown by the software:
View details of an auction…

…and zoom the description for better display on tv.

You can see every image the seller has provided for the auction.

New in version 2 are the detailed pages for shipping costs, article attributes and the item’s payment options:
You can list all payment options for each auction…

…and list all attributes that were set by the seller.

This software gives you a complete new feeling of eBay: If the end of an auction comes closer and you are in on the detail’s page, a realtime countdown will be shown. The currently highest bidder is reloaded frequently so that you will see if you have to place a higher bid to win this auction.

You can even buy an item with your remote control immediately, if you like (“Buy Now”) or place a bid on auctions.

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By the way: every bid or buy has to be confirmed again to eliminate accidential bids.

Imagine this scenario: while browsing around an eBay auction from the office, you find a long time searched item. You just add it to your watchlist in “my eBay” from your office PC. A few days later, you are watching tv in the evening on using your Windows Media Center to have the comfort of timeshift, EPG and other features. Suddenly, a notification pops up live on your tv screen showing that your watched eBay auction will end in 5 minutes!

You pause live tv, open the specific auction and place the winning bid just with your remote control. Then you go back to your paused live tv and continue watching without having missed a single second.

A dream? No! Just install mceAuction on your Windows Media Center PC.

Nearly all eBay sites all around the world can be used with this plugin (currently, 23 sites are supported). You can add eBay users to the program which can be easily switched. This way, every family member has it’s own eBay username in this software. When you start the plugin, the last seen auctions are shown to navigate fast to the last items or have a quick look how an auction is envolving.

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Every family member can even add his own eBay user account!

And everyone can access “my eBay” through mceAuction.

The sections “I watch”, “I bid”, “I won”, “I lost”, “I sell”, “I have sold” and “Unsold items” can be shown with all auctions in it. There is also a list available of auctions ending soon.

mceAuction also works on Media Center Extenders like Microsoft XBox360 (requires a connection to Windows Media Center PC)

This program is officially certified by eBay® as “eBay compatible application”. This means that all transactions with the eBay-Servers have been checked by eBay® and do the right things and only the action they are announced as.

The program is free, but any donation is welcome.
Imagine all the hours of work we spent in developing this software to bring eBay® to your Nintendo Wii console.