Find all your movies, music and pictures in Media Center

Gone are the days when PCs were merely used to store a few photos. It’s now common to have loads of multimedia fi les on your hard drive, including your home videos, the odd TV recording and loads of music. This means it’s important to find an easy way to view your collection – especially if you want to operate your PC from the comfort of your couch.

Windows Media Center, with its easy-touse interface, is designed to play video files stored on your PC through your television or home entertainment system. This simple and stylish application even enables you to manage what you watch with a remote control rather than your keyboard and mouse. In order to do this efficiently, however, you need to get organised.

Even though there are folders marked specifically for music, pictures and videos, these files are often dotted all around your hard drive and it’s important to introduce Media Center to the various locations in which your multimedia files are stored on your PC. Media Center enables you to quickly and easily sync these locations and catalogue your collection.

All that’s left to do now is to open the video library, pick out something to watch and put your feet up. Most videos play back without a hitch, but you may have difficulty getting QuickTime MOV files to play. Rather than spending hours fiddling with the settings, try downloading Imtoo’s MOV Converter. This application, which costs $29 (around £14.50), enables you to process QuickTime files and convert them into Media Center-friendly videos. Follow the steps and you’ll have your very own TV channel in minutes.

1. Change settings

Launch Windows Media Center and on the start screen, use the mouse or your remote to scroll through the options until you get to Tasks. Now move across to and select Settings. This presents you with a new menu.

2. Library setup

From the Settings options, scroll down to Library Setup and select it. On the next screen opt to Add folder to watch. This enables Media Center to include all the video fi les in the folder that you choose in the Video Library.

3. Add folders

Choose Next to move to the next screen. Now you need to indicate where the new folder is. In most cases, you’ll need to choose Add folders on this computer, but you can also include ones on other PCs on your network.

4. Browse to the folder

Click Next and browse to the folder that you want to add videos from. Use the buttons with plus signs to expand the folders that you see. To select a folder put a tick in the box next to it. Click Next and Finish.