![]() You can unleash the full power of Media Center by connecting your computer to an HDTV and using a Media Center remote to control all the action from your couch.Ī PC connected to a TV and a Media Center remoteĪnother option is to connect your computer to a standard computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse. When used to its fullest, Media Center can turn your computer into a powerful home entertainment hub. ![]() Kingburns has a few more interesting things to share in his post below.Windows Media Center is included in some editions of Windows 7. When you press play on the remote it will resume from where you paused your video. One last thing I did notice was if you leave media centre for a couple of minutes it will now display a slideshow of photos that are on the computer, it wouldn’t let me screenshot this but here is a photo of it below. I’ve not covered everything that’s new here, but Ill upload the post as I discover more. I play my recorded TV back on my modded Xbox a lot of the time which cannot decode WTV files, however if you right click on a WTV file in Windows 7 you will be displayed with an option to convert it to a DVR-MS file which works a lot better with 3rd party devices and applications. I think something you should be aware of is Windows 7 media center records tv to WTV format and not DVR-MS, if your only going to watch the TV on the pc you record it this probably won’t bother you, however unless your others pc’s are running Windows 7 or Windows Vista with the TV pack they will not even recognise the WTV format. The video library has improved a bit in regards to videos saved on network shares, Windows 7 media centre will instantly find and display video files shared from another pc, you can also choose which folder it displays so you don’t have to browse though them all to get to the media.įor example I have Downloads > TV shared, I can till media centre to automatically map the TV folder so i don’t have to navigate through the downloads folder like I did on Vista.Ī lot of improvements exist under the hood including support for DVB-S, DVB-S2 and Cable Cards, Media Center will also play BBC HD natively without needing to install hacks and codec’s like in Vista. The music library is pretty much the same as it is in vista from what i remember, screenshot showing it with the sample music included with Windows 7. Interestingly enough the movie library recognises I have a Blueray disc in but won’t allow me to play or rip it to the media centre. I’m still exploring what’s new in Media centre. The movie library will expend as you use media centre and record movies, I’m not sure if you can import your own movies in to the library. The recorded tv section is just about the same as it is in Vista except you can now sort programs by the original air date and by where it is been shared from. The TV guide has been updated to display a little HD logo to let you know the program is broadcasted in HD, if you have a HD tuner the program will be recorded in HD as you might have guessed! Sadly Blue-ray and HD-DVD playback is not possible from Windows Media Center, if you install PowerDVD you can get it to launch that when you have a BlueRay or HD-DVD disk in but sadly its not possible to play it directly in media centre at this time. You can tell media center to record the movie or start viewing it immediately.Īny movies you record will be accessible from your movie library as well as recorded tv. You can sort though and view movies on next or search by genres / HD movies. ![]() This is where things get interesting, if you click the movie guide all the movies broadcasting on the channels you have available are displayed with box art and a description. In the media centre main menu we now have a movies section, which contains a movie library, movie guide, a search button and an option to play a DVD. The guide has been updated to download Boxart and display it when a movie is on, a nice little improvement in my opinion. The main interface has got a bit of a redesign, nothing too major as you can see below. I had no problems with drivers or it failing to recognise tuners which I was expecting to from my experiences with Vista back in the Vista beta days. I was able to just load media centre, do the express setup then let it scan for TV channels. to my surprise everything was installed, yes everything. I was impressed right from the start, after Windows 7 had installed I checked device manage to see what I needed to install drivers for. As the hard drive in our Media Centre PC failed I thought it was a good excuse to put an old hard drive in it and give Windows 7 a test drive until the replacement drive arrives.
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