Personalizing Media Center on Vista

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Like most programs, Media Center has options that you can adjust to your own needs and preferences. To get to those settings, select Tasks on Media Center’s home page and click Settings. You see buttons for changing General, TV, Pictures, Music, DVD, and Extender. I’ll cover each in the sections to follow.

General Settings

Clicking General Settings takes you to still more options for personalizing Media Center. Under Startup and Window Behavior, you’ll find the following.

Startup and Window Behavior

The Startup and Window Behavior button takes you to general options for controlling how Media Center behaves, as follows:

- Windows Media Center window always on top: Choosing this option prevents other program windows on a computer monitor from covering Media Center’s program window. It will also prevent you from switching to another program when Media Center is maximized to full-screen size!

- Show “Not designed for Windows Media Center” dialog: Some of the online services and other Web content you can get to in Media Center can’t be operated through a remote control or the normal Media Center interface. Choosing this option ensures that you see a warning when you encounter such content, so you can cancel out if you want. That way, you won’t get stuck on some page that you can’t operate with a remote control.

- Start Windows Media Center when Windows Starts: Choosing this option makes Media Center open onto the desktop automatically each time you start Windows.

- Show taskbar notifications: Choose this option to ensure that you see Notification area messages telling you when Media Center is up to something, such as recording a scheduled TV show.

- Show TV Tips in Guide: Select this option to show optional tips in the program guide. Clear this option to hide those tips. If your cable TV provider also provides your telephone service, and they support this feature, you can choose options under Show notifications to specify how you want to handle incoming calls. If you can’t get it to work, check with your telephone service provider to see if they support Media Center.

Visual and Sound Effects

The Visual and Sound Effects options let you enable, or disable, the transition animations between pictures in a slide show. Here you can also enable or disable the audio feedback you hear when navigating in Media Center, choose a color scheme for your Media Center display, and choose a background color for videos that don’t fill the entire screen.

Program Library Options

Choosing Program Library Options takes you to options that allow you to control the media experience (meaning some might temporarily override your personal settings outside of Media Center). You can choose to access media information (metadata) from your media files in Media Center. You can hide Internet security warnings that may pop up, if they’re not really protecting you from anything and just getting in your way. Click Edit Program Library to remove unwanted options and programs.

Windows Media Center Setup

The Media Center Setup options allow you to set up your Internet connection, TV signal (if you have a TV Tuner), speakers, and TV/monitor. If you want to run through the initial setup process again, click Run Setup Again. That will take you through the entire process, step by step.

Parental Controls

Media Center setup has parental controls that are separate from those in Windows Vista. Think up a fourdigit access code that you won’t forget. (If you forget the code, you’ll lock yourself out of blocked content.) Then click Parental Controls and enter that code as instructed onscreen. After you entered the code (twice), you’re taken to a page where you can activate TV blocking and DVD blocking, change your access code, or turn off parental controls.

Automatic Download options

The Automatic Download options allow you to enable or disable automatic downloading of media information and program guide data. If you disable downloading of media information, you’ll see “Unknown” in place of many artist and album names, “Track” instead of song titles, and other generic information. Turn automatic downloading back on to replace the unknown and generic information with actual names and titles. If you disable automatic program guide downloads, you’ll need to update the program guide manually from time to time. To do that, go into the program guide, right-click a channel in the left column, and choose Get Latest Guide. If you’re using a remote control, go into the guide, highlight a channel number, press the More button on the remote control, and choose Get Latest Guide.

Optimization

The Optimization option takes you to a page where you can schedule optimization tasks to run on a regular schedule. Be sure to choose a time when the computer will be on but you won’t be needing Media Center, because you won’t be able to use Media Center for the few minutes it takes to complete those tasks.

TV settings

The TV Settings button on the Settings page lets you configure TV recording and other aspects of using TV in Media Center. The Recorder button takes you to a page where you can view your recording history and set defaults for TV recording. The Recorder Storage button lets you choose where you want to store recorded TV. It has to be a hard drive, but not necessarily your C: drive. You can’t record TV straight to DVD in Media Center. But after you’ve recorded a show you can burn it to DVD. Verify that you can play the DVD in your TV’s DVD player. Then you can delete the copy of the show that’s still on your hard disk. Use the Record on Drive option to choose where you want to store recorded TV.  Choose the drive on which you want to store recorded TV shows. The maximum number of hours of recorded video that will fit on the selected drive is shown. The slider shows how much live TV can be buffered (stored) during a live TV pause. The TV Locations option allows you to specify folders that contain recorded TV, so Media Center can find them and add them to your library. The Recording Defaults button takes you to still more options for controlling TV recording. There are nine options in all. To scroll through hidden options, use the Up and Down buttons on a remote control. Or use the arrow buttons on your keyboard, or click the up and down arrows near the lower-right corner with your mouse. Again, I think the options are self-explanatory. You can choose how long you want to keep recorded TV shows, a quality, a little extra leeway at the start and end of every show, and settings that apply only to recorded TV series. Other buttons on the TV page include the following:

- Guide: Use this button to configure the program guide, add missing channels, tell it what region you live in (in case the guide is incorrect), and manually update the guide.

- Set up TV Signal: Clicking this button takes you through a step-by-step wizard for configuring your incoming TV signal.

- Configure your TV or Monitor: This is the same setting as the one under the General options. Use it to get the best picture quality on your TV or monitor.

- Audio: Choose Stereo, SAP, or any other audio option provided by your hardware.

- Closed Captioning: Turn closed captioning on or off and choose between CC1 and CC2.

Pictures Settings

You can show pictures in random order (or not), show pictures from subfolders in your Pictures folder (or not), and show captions (the filename and date taken) with each picture (or not). When you launch a slide show from the Music area to play along with the music, the song title usually appears briefly at the start of each song, and then again at the end. You can choose to have the song title shown the whole time that the song is playing, or not at all. The Animated option causes each picture in the slide show to pan and zoom into view. Clearing the Animated option makes each picture appear more abruptly without any special effects.

Music Settings

The Music button provides options for controlling music visualizations when no slide show is playing. You can choose which visualizations you want to use, and when you want visualizations to begin and end.

DVD Settings

The DVD Settings option lets you choose a default language for multi-language DVDs. You can also control closed captions for DVDs from the page. If you use a remote control to work Media Center, you can configure Program Skip and Replay buttons, and the Channels buttons according to your own preferences.

Extender Settings

Media Center extenders are devices and programs that extend Media Center’s capabilities. For example, Microsoft Xbox 360 acts as an extender to share your Media Center library with other players in the house. You need to purchase an extender first. Then follow the instructions that came with that extender to hook it into Media Center on your PC.

Library Setup In Windows Vista

Click Library Setup to add folders to, or remove folders from, Media Center’s watch list. Pictures, music, videos, and recorded TV from all the folders you specify are added to Media Center automatically, so you can play them whenever you want. Clicking Tasks on the home page provides more than just the Setting option. You’ll find options for burning optical discs (CDs and DVDs), syncing with other devices, shutting down or restarting the computer, and adding extenders.

Burning CDs and DVDs from Media Center

There are many ways to burn CDs and DVDs in Windows Vista. The disks you end up with are the same whether you burn them using those techniques or Media Center. Of course, with Media Center, it’s easy to get to all your media files (music, pictures, videos, recorded TV). And you can do it all from a TV screen with a remote control, if that’s the way you want to do it. Here’s how it works, starting from within Media Center:

1. If you haven’t already done so, put a recordable CD or DVD into the CD or DVD burner.

2. After a brief delay you should see Burn a CD or DVD. Click that (not the X that appears to the right of it).

If the disk was already in the drive before you started Media Center, choose Tools from Media Center’s home page and click Burn CD/DVD.

3. Choose which type of disc you want to create. The options available to you depend on the type of disc you inserted:

- Audio CD: Create a music CD for playing in a stereo, CD player, or computer.

- Data CD: Create a CD that contains files for playback on a computer only (and devices that can play audio files).

- Data DVD: Create a DVD that contains files to be played on a computer.

- Video DVD: Create a DVD Video disk that contains video to be watched from a standard DVD player or on a computer.

- DVD Slide Show: Create a picture slide show on a DVD that can be played in a computer or watched on a TV with a DVD player.

4. Click or choose Next.

5. Follow the onscreen instructions.

Exactly what happens next depends on what you choose in step 3. But it’s just a matter of reading and following the instructions that appear on the screen.

You cannot burn protected content to Audio CDs or Video DVDs. However, in some cases you can copy them to data discs.

That’s one way to burn CDs and DVDs from Media Center. Another is to navigate to the specific item you want to burn and start the process from there. In some cases you’ll see a Burn CD or DVD button right on the screen. In other cases you might have to right-click the item to burn or press the More button on a

remote control. For example, you can navigate to a recorded TV program where you see the Play, Delete, Keep Until, and other options for a TV show. Then right-click an empty spot on that page or press the More button to see an option for burning to CD or DVD.

Syncing, Shut Down, and Extenders

The Sync option in Tools makes it easy to sync a compatible device with your Media Center content. Exactly how it works depends on the specific device you’re using. If you can’t get it to work by guessing, check the manual that came with the device for instructions on syncing with Windows Vista Media Center. The Shut Down option in Tools offers a way of closing Media Center from a mouse or remote control. You’ll also have options to Log Off, Shut Down the computer, Restart the computer, or put the computer into Standby mode.