In these modern times, there’s no longer any need to miss your favourite TV. byRemote is a new plugin for Windows Media Center, that allows you to access Media Center’s EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) remotely from any PC or smartphone.

It runs as a Windows Service, so it’s always available without the need to be logged into the desktop and presents the EPG using a fantastic Silverlight 4 user interface in a web browser, with listings for all of your channels available for the next two weeks. You can check out episode summaries, additional screenings, and search for specific programmes by title. Best of all, when you’ve spotted something you must record in the guide, you can record the episode or the whole series with a single click.

On the mobile side, Windows Phone 7 users get a fabulous, native version of the EPG which you can see in action here, whilst other phone models get to play with a text based XHTML version to use in the handset’s web browser.  

Other features include the ability to view and manage your scheduled recordings, search for shows by genre, cache data locally on Silverlight Clients for a little extra speed, and view complete episode guides of hundreds of thousands of TV series.

Remote access is made super-easy if you're a Windows Home Server owner. Simply forward a port on your router to your Media Center, then access the Media Center PC directly using your home server's remote web address. Job done.

Apps like byRemote really bring the benefits of using an extensible DVR like Windows Media Center to life. It’s a must-have for all Media Center owners, and if you haven’t clicked the green button yet, this may well persuade you to give it a try.

Now, that’s a very real possibility with the new InfiniTV 4 card.

The card outperforms most cable companies’ DVRs by a longshot, allowing you to record up to four live channels of HDTV at once. It offers support for regular, HD and premium channels, too.

The card interoperates with Windows Media Center and its Extenders like the Xbox 360, allowing you to ditch the monthly DVR rental fee you pay to your cable company today. Instead, you install the card and then just stream live or recorded TV from the PC where it’s installed to the other PCs and TVs (via extenders) around the home.

The card is designed for desktop computers, not laptops, but will support  “slim” entertainment PCs thanks to its PCI Express Low Profile form factor. The company says an external USB-attached version and other form factors are currently in the works for laptop users and those on other platforms.

The Ceton InfiniTV 4 card has a Suggested Retail Price of $399.00 and is available to pre-order today from Zones.com. Pre-ordered units will ship mid-2010. Over time, it will arrive in brick-and-mortar and online stores as well as in PCs built by OEMs.

To see if your PC supports the card, check out the system requirements here.

Vista users can continue to use the older version of the plugin, though. The developer says that two-thirds of the plugin’s users are on Windows 7, so he made the decision to make improvements the majority can enjoy.

So what’s new in this release?  Things users have been asking for, including:

• A new popup screen for managing the TV programs, allowing you to play the program, set a timer recording to record other showings of the program if you have a TV tuner configured, and if the program supports it you can add it to a playlist or download it (the last two work for BBC WMV programs, but not flash).
• When playing flash content, sometimes the mouse didn't click in the right place. Now you can mode the cursor round the screen with the remote by pressing the cursor keys, and OK to click. This allows you to play even the most troublesome programs.
• The interface is now touchscreen enabled, so if you have a touchscreen media center you can easily navigate through the screens.
• Plugins are now directly available within the application. When you go to preferences you will see a list of plugins. When you pick one, the system will take care of installing and updating it to keep you up to date with your favorite content.
• MSN has been removed. This is because there is now a native media center app to support MSN.
• Improved memory management - only one instance of TunerFreeMCE will be active at any one time

If you’ve never tried TunerFreeMCE before, I recommend checking it out. It’s a great plugin for watching streaming Internet video on your PC and Media Center extender, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five for UK users and Hulu support for US users. Believe it or not, the plugin is actually free. However, donations are accepted.

(via Ian Dixon)

But I have a little secret for you: you don’t have to wait until 2011 to watch Hulu on your Xbox. There are several ways Media Center users can gain access to Hulu right now. It’s been awhile since I last tested these (posted here), but the one I liked the best was PlayOn, which still supports Hulu, Netflix, CBS, YouTube and more. It’s kind of pricey though – $39.99 for the first year and then $19.99 afterwards. But as a “cancel your cable” alternative, it’s an investment worth making since its yearly price is comparable to what many pay monthly for their cable TV.

With the launch of the Kylo Browser Beta 0.7, a new plugin for Media Center lets you browse the web via your HDTV after launching the browser from within Media Center. What’s even better is that you can easily close it and return to Media Center when you’re done surfing the web. That’s a big plus.

The browser requires no hardware keyboard for text entry – an onscreen keyboard does the job. It also lets you zoom, pan and bookmark sites. Onscreen targets, fonts and the cursor are made larger for better viewing too.

One thing it won’t do: play Hulu videos. This worked at first but Hulu quickly blocked it. But for light TV-based web surfing, it does the job.

As always, note the beta label and proceed at your own risk!

Now that same HD streaming is available in Media Center too. Ian Dixon reports that Netflix members running Windows 7 will have access to over 1800 movies in HD in Windows Media Center. In addition to streaming, from within the WMC Netflix app, you can also search your Netflix library, manage your Instant and DVD queues, filter searches and more.

In the updated version of the plugin, there’s now support for widescreen viewing, an optional day/night (sun/moon) forecast indication next to the location title, as well as some other tweaks and improvements to the visual style.

Windows 7 users can download the new plugin from here for 32-bit systems or here for 64-bit systems.

(via/img credit: GeekTonic.com)

TV/Hulu Plugins

Plugins that allow you to watch TV shows via Media Center are very popular, especially those that provide access to Hulu, the online site where major TV networks have teamed up to provide free, streaming video. There are a number of different plugins to choose from, each with their own feature set and fan base. Which one you choose to install may come down to its offerings, ease of use, price, or just personal preference.  

Hulu Desktop Plugin

The Hulu Desktop Integration 1.0 plugin offers an easy way to hop between using Windows Media Center and the Hulu Desktop application, the desktop software that complements the online site. Once installed into Windows 7 Media Center, this plugin sets up its own menu simply called “HULU.” When you click on Hulu in this menu, the software will automatically close Windows Media Center and launch Hulu Desktop already in full screen mode. When you’re finished watching the streaming videos in Hulu, you just click on “Exit” from the software’s main menu and Windows Media Center will return, it too in full screen mode. This easy switching also works with Windows Media Center remote controls but does not work with extenders like the Xbox 360.

Before installing this application, you’ll need to install Hulu Desktop. Make sure both it and Windows Media Center are closed before you install the plugin which is available for a free download here.

PlayIt Plugin

With the Playon Digital Media Server, you can stream video on your Xbox 360, HP MediaSmart TV, or any other DLNA-compliant device.  However, it wasn’t until the release of the PlayIt plugin that Media Center owners could get in on the action, too. Thanks to a user by the name of Elutmann1 on Microsoft’s Green Button forums, a site for Media Center enthusiasts, the PlayIt plugin lets Media Center users connect to a PlayOn server to stream video as well as use the Media Center controls like rewind, fast forward, play, pause and stop. With PlayIt installed, you gain access to Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu, CBS, CNN, ESPN, YouTube, and more, all of which become available for viewing within the Media Center application.

However, although the PlayIt plugin software is free of charge, the PlayOn server software is not. PlayOn is $39.99, but a free 2-week trial is available. You can download PlayOn from here then follow these instructions to install the PlayIt plugin. The plugin works on Vista Media Center and up.

For additional plugins designed to operate with PlayOn server, visit the community site at playonplugins.com where a number of developers share additional third-party plugins that works with PlayOn.

Boxee

Boxee is an open source media center type application that received a lot of attention in recent days thanks to its ability to stream popular TV programming to your PC or TV while also incorporating “social” elements like the ability to friend other users, rate content, and make recommendations. 

Within Boxee, users have access to content from major TV networks like ABC, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, and the WB as well as online content like Blip.TV, MTV music videos, MySpaceTV, Revision3 programs, Apple movie trailers, BBC iPlayer shows, Joost, SHOUTcast, Jamendo, Last.fm, NPR, and YouTube. In addition, you can add picture displaying plugins from Flickr and Picasa and RSS feeds.

Hulu support, however, has been off and on because Hulu’s parent company, NBC Universal, was asked to remove it from Boxee by their content partners. Boxee later re-added it using Hulu RSS feeds. Again, Hulu blocked access until Boxee introduced a new architecture which uses Firefox so that Hulu now sees Boxee as a Mozilla web browser so it won’t get blocked.

Thanks to the enthusiast site, Missing Remote with help from MVP Andrew Cherry, there’s a way to added Boxee support to your Windows 7 Media Center. You’ll first need to download this zip file and extract it to your Boxee installation directory (e.g. “C:\Program Files\Boxee\BoxeeMCE”). Then you’ll right-click to launch the file “installBoxee.cmd.” Detailed instructions are here. Although written for Vista Media Center, it works with Windows 7 works too.

To add Boxee onto Media Center’s start menu in Windows 7, you’ll need to navigate to Media Center’s “Extras” menu where you’ll now see Boxee listed. Right-click on the icon and choose “Add to Start Menu” from the menu that appears.

SecondRunTV

SecondRunTV is a plugin that allows you to launch the Hulu desktop application right within Media Center. Since Hulu Desktop works with a remote this makes SecondRunTV feel like it’s just another Media Center application.

The interface for SecondRunTV lets you sort through the available TV stations by Network or by Title. Movies and Trailers are separated in the two other menus.  Unfortunately though, the plugin doesn’t work on extenders like the Xbox 360, so it’s only worthwhile if you do most of your TV viewing on your Media Center PC itself. You can download the SecondRun.tv plugin for free here (donations accepted), but be aware that it’s still in beta status. 

TunerFree MCE

TunerFree MCE is a Windows Media Center plugin that brings several of the United Kingdom's main TV providers (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five), as well as all of the BBC Radio stations to your Media Center PC and extender. They’ve also added full Hulu support for their U.S. users.

The program’s interface displays the various channels’ logos for easy access as well as a “favorites” section for tracking your most frequently watched programs. You can also sort the programming by date or search through the available content by keyword.

For a little bit of extra fun, the developer even added a Twitter section which lets you tweet what you watch right from Media Center itself. To use this feature, go into TunerFree’s preferences and enter in your Twitter credentials. You’ll then have a new Twitter icon on the TunerFree start page in Media Center.

TunerFree is a free download (donations accepted) and works on both Vista and Windows 7. (On a personal note, I use this plugin myself and found it to be one of the easiest ones to install and configure.)

HuluMCE plugin

Again thanks to the Missing Remote blog, there’s information on how to add the Hulu Desktop program to MediaCenter as a shortcut from the main screen. This is similar to the functionality provided by SecondRunTV so you would want to try one or the other, not both.

To install this plugin, you’ll need to grab the zip file called HuluMCE Plugin and unzip it into the same folder where you have the Hulu Desktop application installed. (By default - C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\HuluDesktop). There are a few more steps involved to get it properly configured which you can follow by reading through the online guide available here. 

Once installed, the HuluMCE plugin will appear in your TV+Movies menu on Vista Media Center or in your Extras menu on Windows 7 Media Center. You can then browse and view Hulu content via the plugin and you can even use your Media Center remote to control Hulu.

ZeeVee

The Zinc Internet browser is a free downloadable software program from ZeeVee, a company known for their commercial and residential solutions for HD video. With the Zinc software, you can browse through a number of channels, including major TV networks like FOX, ABC, CBS, CW, and ESPN as well as online sites like Hulu, Revision3, and YouTube.

A Green Button forum member, Rob Rogers, at one time made a ZeeVee plugin available for Windows Media Center users that lets you launch and browse ZeeVee’s Zinc player in Media Center. Sadly though, he decided to take it down because he didn’t see much interest. However, we reached out to him to ask him about it and he shared the details of how it was made in case anyone wants to duplicate his efforts.

Basically, he downloaded the HuluMCE plugin (above) and modified it to point to the Zinc files instead. That’s it. After doing so, unzip the files it contains in the same folder as your Zinc install (which you must first get from ZeeVee’s website). Typically, the installation location is %ProgramFiles%\ZeeVee\Zv\zviewer\ZeeVeeMCE\. Next, run the InstallZeeVee.cmd as an administrator. You’ll then find Zinc available from the Extras menu in Windows 7 Media Center or the Picture & Videos menu in Windows Vista Media Center.

TubeCore

TubeCore is one of the newer plugins for streaming TV shows from the internet via Windows Media Center. The software finds online video from websites like Hulu, CBS.com, the Onion, Revision3, and many others, and lets you watch it on your Media Center computer or on a Media Center extender like the Xbox 360.

To use TubeCore, you’ll need a Vista or Windows 7 PC, a TV connection (either direct or an extender), and media server software.

However, unlike some of the other plugins on this list, TubeCore is not free. You can try it for 2 weeks at no charge, but afterwards, you’ll have to purchase it if you want to continue to use it. At that time, the plugin is available for a one-time fee of $19.99. Since you are paying, though, you’re entitled to support via the company’s tech support email address and forums.

Sky Player

Just in time for Windows 7’s launch, the Sky Player add-in for Windows 7 Media Center has been announced (although not launched). This plugin, designed for UK customers, lets you watch live and on-demand programming from Sky TV’s online TV service, Sky Player. The player currently offers 24 channels as well as an online library containing 500 movies.

Existing Sky TV customers can simply install the plugin and watch the programming on their Media Center PC or extender. New customers can access the content by paying for a monthly subscription.

Image courtesy of Andrew Edney

Others of Interest

There are a few other plugins that may also be of interest to Windows Media Center users. While these below don’t provide you with access to streaming TV and movies directly, they do provide other ways to watch streaming video on your Media Center PC.

Orb

Orb is a desktop software program that lets you share files you already have on your PC with your friends, with other computers, mobile phones, and even your Xbox. Specifically, it’s designed for sharing multimedia content like videos, photos, and music.

Although not officially documented by the company, blogger Ian Dixon discovered an Orb.MCL file tucked away in the Orb directory after installing the software on his PC. As it turns out, this file was an entry point to Windows Media Center which lets you run the Orb front end via Media Center. A commenter on the blog post also explained how to manually create this file, if desired.

My Trailers and In the Movies

My Trailers and In the Movies are actually two different plugins from the same company.  “My Trailers SE for MCE” allows you to watch movie trailers with via Windows Media Center while “In The Movies SE for MCE” delivers information about movies in the theaters now.

In “My Trailers” you can watch trailers for current releases as well as for movies that are coming soon. You can scroll through the releases using the left and right arrow buttons and you can maximize the playing trailer to view it full screen. 

“In the Movies” has a feature called "In Theaters" which shows you the movies that are currently playing plus a "Showtimes" which shows you where and what time the movie you want to see is playing. "Reviews" displays comments about the movies and "Coming Soon" gives you a sneak peek upcoming releases. Finally, the "Box Office" section shows the weekend box office top 50 movies.

Both plugins are Windows 7 compatible.

HD Movie Trailers

HD Movie Trailers, which is hosted on Codeplex, describes itself as a "proof of concept." However, a blogger over at Hack7MC.com installed it in order to add movie trailers to the information screen for each movie in his collection. Like it sounds, this plugin lets you watch HD movie trailers via Media Center, but unfortunately, you have to first download them manually and place them in that movie’s folder. You then have to create an XML file so Media Center knows where to find them.

The plugin is designed to work with MediaBrowser, which is a popular alternative UI for Media Center.

Obviously, this is one of the geekier plugins to use, but some of you may find it helpful.

Last But Not Lest, Netflix!

Of course, one of the best ways to stream movies (and TV shows available on DVD) is via Netflix. If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can access the new option which only appeared days ago from Windows Media Center’s “Movies” menu.

The first time you click on the “Netflix” option, you’ll need to check the box agreeing to the Terms of Service and then click the “Install” button. You’ll then sign into your account or, if you don’t have one, you have the option to sign up for a free trial right there. Once signed in, you can browse through and manage your DVD queue and your instant queue as well as search through Netflix’s database of available movies.

To watch a movie from your instant queue, just click on the thumbnail and then click “Play.” The movie will begin immediately.

So Many Choices…

As you can see, there are numerous choices for watching TV and movies within Windows 7 Media Center even if you can’t afford to invest in a TV tuner card at the moment. Many of the options above are even free to install and use. Although a lot of the plugins focus on Hulu integration, a U.S.-only site, international users will still be able to take advantage of those plugins which stream other content like YouTube videos or Revision3 web shows. No matter which plugins you choose to install, you can be sure it will make Windows Media Center a lot more fun to use.

At Last! Install Your Own CableCARD-powered TV Tuners

For those of you who don’t use TV tuners in your Windows PC, this news may have flown under your radar a bit. However, it’s actually a rather significant change to the existing rules surrounding the implementations of CableCARDs in Windows PCs.

Back in 2006 when CableCARD tuners first became available for use in home computers, the industry consortium known as CableLabs, the cable industry’s R&D group who licenses the CableCARD specification, decided that they didn’t want consumers to install such tuners on their own. Instead, only pre-approved and pre-certified computers from select OEMs would come with the appropriate tuners installed.

This was clearly a blow for “do-it-yourselfers” who were hoping they could simply upgrade their current machines to take advantage of the new CableCARDs and their related benefits. Specifically, those benefits include access to the full line-up of channels provided by your cable company – even HDTV and premium channels – assuming you have the right subscription.

Now, thanks to the newly announced series of initiatives from Microsoft and CableLabs, anyone can install these CableCARD-powered tuners into their Windows 7 PCs. You don’t have to buy a new PC with the cards already installed.

Will Your PC Support a Digital Cable Tuner with CableCARD?

To see if your PC will support the tuners, a new tool called the “Digital Cable Advisor” is being released by Microsoft which will scan your system and analyze if your computer meets the necessary requirements. If so, then you’ll be able to grab one of the CableCARD-ready tuners (like the popular ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner) and install it in your PC yourself.. Oh, and while you’re at it, you may want to grab a few more because now in Windows 7, you can install as many as four CableCARD TV tuners instead of two, which was all that was supported in Vista. With four tuners, you can record or watch four channels at the same time. That certainly beats what the cable company’s own DVR can handle! Using multiple tuners is a great solution for all the various TV conflicts that occur thanks to the major networks pitting their best programs against each other all on the same night. 

To be clear, you’re not really limited to four tuners in Windows 7, you’re limited to four tuners of each type. There are actually three types of TV tuners currently available – analog tuners, digital tuners, and CableCARD tuners. So, if you’d like, you can install the other types of tuners as well in addition to your CableCARD tuners.

The Digital Cable Advisor tools will be made accessible on October 22nd from within Windows Media Center under the “Extras” menu. To use it, run the installation program to install the tool into the Extras library. (Note: This tool is for Windows 7 only.)

6 Tuners, 1 Card!

There are other ways to get more than four tuners in a Media Center PC than having to worry about the different types of tuners, though. For example, check out the upcoming Ceton Multi-Channel Cable TV Card. This new card, expected in Q1 2010, allows you to play or record up to six live channels of HDTV at once and stream live HD channels or recordings to multiple HDTVs through the home. Unfortunately, the 6-tuner card won’t be sold as a standalone product, only in PCs manufactured by certain OEMs. That’s because those OEMs license something called the “Advanced Entertainment Pack (AEP) for Windows,” a technology which allows for more than four tuners. The 6-tuner card is a solution for those systems. However, a 4-tuner and 2-tuner version of the card will both be available as standalone retail offerings early next year.

Windows 7 and SDV Support

In addition to the news about customer-installed CableCARD tuners, Microsoft also announced that you’re now able to use the CableCARD tuners with switched digital video (SDV) cable systems, a newer architecture for switching digital video which several cable companies began to use thanks to its bandwidth-saving abilities. Because of this change on the cable providers’ part, many Windows Media Center users who were previously streaming and recording video with their TV tuners were not able to receive the SDV content. Now, by using a device called a “tuning adapter” which is provided by your cable provider along with your CableCARD, you’ll be able to tune into SDV broadcasts when using Windows Media Center in Windows 7.

Your cable company will inform you if you need one of these tuning adapters when you purchase your CableCARD.

You will also need to do a firmware update for your digital cable tuner to enable SDV support. For the ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, the 1.19.12 firmware will be made available on October 22nd. The new firmware also delivers stability improvements, UPnP support, and “Copy Freely” support (see below). However, note that the SDV support only works with Windows 7, not Vista.

To install the tuning adapter, you’ll need to plug its USB port into your computer’s USB port as the following diagram shows:

Image courtesy of The Green Button

If you are using multiple TV tuner cards, you’ll need separate tuning adapters for each and separate high-speed USB ports on your PC as well.

In Windows 7, You Can Now “Copy Freely”

The final announcement was that both Microsoft and CableLabs were going to make it easier for consumers to move the recorded content off their Media Center PCs. For any digital cable TV content marked as “copy freely” (CF), you’ll be able to easily move it from your Windows 7 PC to other PCs, devices, and portable media. Whether or not a show is tagged “CF” depends on the media content’s producer, but in the past, Media Center tended to lock down all the content, whether tagged CF or not. You could then only play back the content via a Media Center PC or extender. Now that will no longer be the case.

To determine if a particular program is copy protected or not, you can view the program’s details in Media Center’s Recorded TV library. Here, you’re able to see whether or not it’s listed with the “Copy Protected” label. If not, you can move or stream the content elsewhere.

Installing a TV Tuner and Configuring Media Center

Once you have physically installed the TV tuner and associated CableCARD into your PC, you’ll need to set it up by installing the necessary drivers and configuring Windows Media Center settings. Windows 7 should automatically detect and install the appropriate drivers for you but if, for some reason, there are not Windows 7 drivers available, the Windows Vista drivers will likely do the trick.

Next, after connecting the video source to your PC, launch Media Center and go to “Live TV Setup” under the TV menu. Then choose “Set Up TV Signal” from the options provided. Here, you’ll provide additional information like your zip code and TV signal provider (like your cable company) so Media Center can download the correct program listings. You should then let Media Center automatically detect the tuner – although you can configure these settings manually, it’s much easier this way.

Configuring Your Program Guide

After the initial configuration completes, you can then set up the program guide to your liking. To do so, go to “Settings” –> “TV” –> then “Guide” in the Media Center menus. Here, can add or remove channels from displaying in the program guide, place them in the order you prefer, and sort them by name or number – whichever is more to your liking.

In Windows 7, you can also edit the individuals channels’ names and numbers. To do so, select the channel in the Program Guide and then choose “More Info.” If you’re using multiple TV tuners, one that’s copy-protected and one that’s not, you can edit the channel on each tuner to have the same number, effectively combining them. Then, under the channel’s settings, you can go to the “Edit Sources” section and change it so the non copy-protected tuner is the primary source for recording from that channel.

Windows Media Center also supports “Favorite” channels, just like most cable companies’ DVRs do today. With this feature, accessible upon right-clicking the Program Guide, you can configure lineups of channels to group favorites together. For example, you may want to have a lineup of just the major networks, just the movie channels, or just kids’ programming.

Recording TV Programs

Finally, you can configure what programs to record. The easiest way to find your favorite shows (besides browsing through the guide, that is) is to go to the “Search” option from the “TV” menu in Media Center. Here, you’re not just able to search by program title as is common with many of today’s DVRs, but you can also search by actor/actress, director, category, or even keywords.

Once you find a show or other listing you want to record, you can do so by pressing the “Record” button on your remote control (if you’re using one) or by accessing the “Details” page for the program listing (Press “OK” with the program highlighted in the guide to show the Details page. Then choose “Record”). From here, you can also choose to record the series or configure advanced options like the start and stop time, how many copies to retain and for how long, etc.

Watching TV

Now the fun part! After all the configurations are complete and you’ve set up which shows to record, you can simply sit back and watch TV.

You can, of course, watch live TV in Media Center and you’re even able to pause and rewind TV programs on your PC, just as you could if you were using your cable company’s DVR.

To watch your recorded programs, head over to the “Recorded TV” section of Media Center’s “TV” menu. The programs are listed by name and also display a thumbnail image for easy reference. From here, you can select the shows you want to watch, delete those you’ve seen, or copy the video to a CD or DVD.

Of course, many people still prefer to watch TV from the comfort of a sofa in their living room on a big-screen TV. That, too, is possible thanks to Media Center extenders. The Xbox 360 is a well-known and popular extender that many people already have in their homes, but there are others too, including products from HP, Linksys, D-Link, and Samsung. You can check out those other options here. No matter what extender you use, any of the programs you record via Windows Media Center will play thanks to built-in Windows Media Codec support.

Windows 7 Features Designed for Media Center

In Windows 7, a new feature of the OS called “HomeGroups” lets you connect your home’s Windows 7 PCs together for easy file and printer sharing. This feature also works with Windows Media Center content which is stored using Windows 7’s “Libraries.” With previous versions of the Windows OS, there was some confusion due to the specialized libraries set up by both Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. But in Windows 7, the operating itself has built-in Windows Explorer libraries for content like music, video, pictures, and documents. Both Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center use those built-in libraries now instead of creating their own.

You can decide what content in those libraries, if any, is to be shared with other computers on your home network (your “HomeGroup”). If you do decide to share content, however, it will show up within Windows Media Center under the appropriate menus (Picture Library, Video Library, etc.). Just looked for the “Shared” section within each menu.

In addition, under the “Recorded TV” menu, other HomeGroup computers can access the shared content recorded by your TV-tuner connected Windows Media Center PC. This is an easy way for you stream video from one PC to another, like from your home office PC to your laptop for instance. And because your Windows Media Center content is stored in the same libraries as your Windows Media Player content, you can also take advantage of Windows 7’s “Remote Media Streaming” feature to watch your Recorded TV shows from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. This feature isn’t turned on by default, but you can easily enable it following the instructions here.

Other Options

If you find out, after running the Digital Cable Advisor, that your PC doesn’t meet the requirements for using CableCARDs, there is the possibility that you can update your system to enable digital cable support. The tool will provide you with additional information about how you can make this happen and what corrective action is needed. After updating your system, you can re-run the tool to be assured that it is now ready.

However, not all PCs, Windows 7 or otherwise, will be able to meet the requirements. If yours doesn’t, you may want to look into installing Windows Media Center plugins instead for viewing TV and movies on your PC. Although you won’t be able to stream live TV or record shows, there are a number of plugins that deliver video content from sites like Hulu, from major TV networks, from YouTube, and other popular web video destinations.

Image Credits for WMC screenshots from The Windows Experience Blog

Unfortunately, the one problem with the program is that it doesn’t offer a GUI front-end where you can add new entries. Instead, you have to manually configure XML and INI files if you want to add any extra program besides PowerDVD, which is included by default.

That’s why you’ll also want to grab the Media Center Launcher Configurator app from here (more info can be found on Chad Dyess’ blog). This additional application provides a simple interface to the Launcher program, allowing you to track, register, and unregister the applications.

I guess for some of you enthusiasts this will be old news based on the date of Chad’s blog entry, but I only recently came across it when searching for something similar and thought it was worth sharing with you.

Now, theming your Media Center isn’t an official feature of the software, but it’s a relatively easy hack for those of you who like to tinker and personalize your PC in unconventional ways. (We have some more info on this here. There’s also step-by-step instructions for changing the default blue theme to black here).

There are already some pretty great themes available over on the new site, including this new theme called "Bokeh" which features colorful bubbles and black guides and menus.

Once you have your new theme installed, head back over to hack7mc.com and check out how you can customize your Media Center icons to match.

Here’s how to get this theme installed, (per the blog post):

1. Download this zip file from Hack7MC.com and extract it to C:\Windows\ehome\
2. If you haven’t already installed the “Take Ownership” registry fix, do so now. Then right-click “C:\Windows\ehome\ehres.dll” and select “Take Ownership”.
3. Once you’ve taken ownership of “ehres.dll” (if you have previously installed a Media Center theme ownership should already be set) right-click the patch file and select “Run as Administrator”. Start the patch once the window appears and wait for it to complete.
4. Re-launch Windows 7 Media Center to make sure the new theme has been applied.

After turning this option on, your channels will be identified with the following colors:

• Green   - Sports
• Purple  - Movies
• Light Blue  - Kids & Family
• Orange - Special
• Yellow  - News

While you’re in the settings there, you can also set channels to display by name instead of number – an especially useful option for identifying which channels are which if you can’t remember them by number.

Don’t you just love things that automate tedious tasks? I sure do. Thanks Jon!

(via hack7mc) 

To see this feature in action, just add some videos (DivX, Avi, wmv, etc.) into your Windows Media Center Video Library and click on one of the files to start playing it automatically. Then click Stop. Now, go do something else  like play another track or even close Media Center entirely. When you return to Media Center and click to play that same video, you will be given the option to either restart or resume playback. How convenient!

This is one of those things that isn’t a huge announcement in and of itself, but just another minor enhancement that, when combined with slews of others like it, make for a better overall computing experience in Windows 7.

(Thanks Ian Dixon!)