Using Photos, music and TV in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista

Easy Interface

Media Center is very easy to use. Main categories - Pictures, Music, TV and so on are organised vertically, so for example to find Music you'd scroll down. Related features are then organised horizontally, so in this example once you scroll down to Pictures + Videos you can scroll sideways to access the picture and video features such as Play All, Video Library and so on; and if you scroll down to the TV + Movies category you can then scroll sideways for Record TV, Live TV, Guide, Play DVD and Search.

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System related items such as Media Center setup, parental controls, display settings, file storage locations and so on are under the Tasks section, which is where you'll also find the options for shutting down the system, burning CDs/DVDS and synchronising media with your portable player.

Picture Perfect

This is the picture library, the first option under Pictures + Videos. You can view your pictures by folder, by tags or by date, and you can turn them into an on-screen slide show by clicking on Play Slide Show.

Quick Pics Fix

Clicking on a photo displays it in full-screen mode, and you can navigate between photos with the arrow keys (or the remote control, if you've bought a Media PC). Right-clicking and selecting Picture Details enables you to see more information about the photo and even perform minor fixes such as red-eye removal.

Music Maestro

Media Center's music selection works in much the same way as its picture library: you can view your tunes by album, artists, genres and so on, and clicking on an image opens the album.

Tune Up

You can now play the album in its entirety, add it to a queue of songs (which is handy for parties), burn it to disc or edit the album or track information.

Music TV

When you play music you have a number of viewing options. You can just look at the album cover (which is what we're doing here) or if you prefer you can see what's coming up in the queue, view a photo slide show, or you can use Media Center's visualiser to make pretty patterns appear on screen. If you insert a music CD rather than play tunes from your hard disk you'll get a similar screen, but this time you'll also get a Copy CD link at the top left of the screen that enables you to rip the tunes to your hard disk. As with Windows Media Player, you can add

Vivid Visuals

Unfortunately the printed page doesn't do justice to the visualiser, which fills the screen with strangely hypnotic patterns in time to the music. You can adjust its behaviour too: just use the arrow keys to change the visualiser's styles.

TV Time

To view a TV programme, click on TV+Movies > Live TV. Media Center will automatically display the TV signal, and if you move the mouse over the bottom of the screen you'll see controls for changing the channel, adjusting the volume and so on.

Stop The Clock

You can also pause live TV and pick up from where you left off, which is handy when the phone rings or when someone comes to the door. If you move the mouse over the screen the play controls will appear at the bottom of the screen; click on Pause to stop the programme and click on it again to resume playback. You can also slow down the action, rewind it or fast-forward it, although of course you can't fast-forward into the future. Even Microsoft isn't that clever.

More Options

If you right-click over the TV programme you'll see the menu shown here, which you can use to find out more. Program Info displays full details of what you're watching, Record - as you'd expect - records it to your hard disk, and Record Series will record every episode of the programme. Zoom adjusts the screen size - handy if you're looking at standard aspect programmes on a widescreen display or vice versa.

Lot Points

If you choose Mini Guide from the right-click menu you'll see a synopsis of the programme immediately below its title.

What's on When

To view the electronic programme guide, go to the main Media Center menu and click on TV+Movies > Guide. You'll now see listings for all the available channels for the next two weeks, and you can view a programme by clicking on it; to record, right-click and choose Record. If you click on a programme that isn't currently broadcasting you'll be able to record it or record the entire series.

Playback

To view your library of recorded programmes, click on TV+Movies > Recorded TV. You'll see thumbnails of each programme, and you can sort the list by date recorded (as shown here) or alphabetically by clicking on Title.

More Info

Click on a thumbnail to find out more about it. Media Center automatically stores information about the programme from the electronic programme guide (where available), and you get the obvious Play and Delete options. You can also set a Keep Until value, which automatically deletes the programme at a specified time: in this example we've said "keep this until something else needs the disk space". As you can see, you can also burn a programme to CD or DVD simply by clicking the link on the left of the screen.

Game On

You can also access your Windows Vista games from within Media Center, which is handy if you're waiting on a programme to start. From the main Media Center menu, scroll down until you see Online Media and then click on Program Library.

Play Time

At the time of writing the only things you'll find in the Program Library are your games, but we're using a pre-release version of Windows Vista here: when it hits the shelves, you can expect lots of other online services to appear here including TV, music and movie download services.

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