Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center

File:Mediacenter5536.png Windows Media Center under Windows Vista
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	2002
Stable release	6.0.6000.16484 / November 8, 2006
Operating system	Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows Vista
Type	Media center
License	Proprietary EULA
Website	Windows Media Center

Windows Media Center is an application designed to serve as a home-entertainment hub. It is included in Windows XP Media Center Edition and premium editions of Windows Vista (Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate). It is designed to be controlled by special remote controls which prominently feature the Green Button, but can also be operated with a mouse and/or keyboard. This button is used to either launch Media Center from Windows or to return to the Start Menu from within the application. Media Center visualizes the computer user's pictures, videos, and music from local hard drives, optical drives, and network locations. It then categorizes them by name, date, tags, and other file attributes. Media managed through Media Center can also be relayed via a home network to standard TV sets via the specially designed Windows Media Center Extender or the Xbox 360.

Features

Television

With the addition of TV tuner cards, Media Center can play back and record scheduled TV shows in either over-the-air High-definition TV, Digital Cable w/ CableCard (1080i Premium HDTV) or standard antenna, cable, or satellite signal. While setting up the TV tuner, an IR (infrared) receiver or hardware is sought, such as a handheld remote controle. After recording (which can be initiated either manually or scheduled via the program guide), it can then burn the shows to DVD or transfer them to a portable media player (with exceptions). Media Center originally had a limitation of 1 analog tuner, but was raised to 2 analog tuners with Media Center 2005. With Update Rollup 1 for Media Center 2005, support for a digital tuner was added, but an analog tuner must still be present for the digital tuner to function. With Rollup 2, up to 4 TV tuners can be configured (2 analog and 2 HDTV). All the tuners must use the same source, for example they must all be off an aerial or a set-top box using the same guide data, you cannot mix Sky Digital and DVB-T for example.

Hacks are available that remove the two-tuner limitation. Five DVB-T tuners have been confirmed to work simultaneously, but the maximum is unknown.

Media Center can stream live and pre-recorded television to Windows Media Center Extenders and to the Xbox consoles, but not to other Windows computers.

Music

Connectivity features of Media Center include various inputs and outputs, for example for RCA type cables (e.g., from cassette players or analog videocassette recorders), microphones, digital video signals and other inputs. Analog to digital conversion within the tuner card enables users to convert older type media to digital media.

Windows Media Center organizes and displays music found on the computer. Music can then be played by selecting "My Music" from the Start Menu. In the default view, albums are arranged in alphabetical order with accompanying album art. Album art can be downloaded off the Internet automatically, or it can be added manually into Media Center. The user can create playlists of different songs or albums, but once created, playlists cannot be edited.

When playing music, the user can pause and fast forward music, as long as Media Center is not in the "View Queue" mode. The user also has the option to shuffle or repeat music in the queue. Visualizations, as in Windows Media Player, can also be viewed, although Extenders do not have this option.

Streaming Video

Media Center can also play back video from URL's, server and client side playlists.

Radio

Some TV tuners support FM radio. Media Center supports play back of all FM tuned stations.

Portable Devices

Windows Media Center has the ability to synchronize media with certain portable devices. These devices include Windows Mobile Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centers, and other players that can sync with Windows Media Player While synchronizing television shows, Windows Media Center encodes the shows using Windows Media Encoder to a Windows Media Video format at a lower quality than the DVR-MS format used for viewing on the desktop media center. This is to complement the limited storage space and processing power of such portable devices. Optionally, music can also be re-encoded to a smaller file size upon synchronization.

Commercials skipping

Like TiVo, allows fast-forwarding through commercials of recorded programs. In fact, some users deliberately wait 10-15 minutes to start watching a program (either recorded or in the live buffer), allowing them to fast-forward through commercials and catch up to "live TV" by the end of the program.

Currently, Windows Media Center has the ability to skip commercials automatically after installing an external plug-in called "DVRMSToolbox" (which is not supported by Microsoft).

Media Center in Windows XP

File:Media center.JPG

Media Center on Windows XP

The final version of Windows XP Media Center Edition was 2005 Update Rollup 2 (UR2), which is basically Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2) with the additional Media Center functionality. The key feature that Windows Professional Edition has that Media Center 2005 lacks is support for Domain Controllers. XP MCE 2005 was the first version of Media Center that could be bought without buying a pre-built system, however it still was only an OEM license.

Windows XP Media Center 2005 was able to run flawlessly on relatively low-end hardware (Celeron D with integrated graphics was sufficient). Due to the more intense graphics requirements of Vista (for the translucent and glowing effects) a more powerful computer is required for acceptable performance, and hence MCE 2005 is still a favorite for many.

Media Center in Windows Vista

File:Windows Media Center - Sports Scores.png

Sports scores in Windows Media Center on Windows Vista

Windows Media Center in Windows Vista includes a redesigned menu system that takes advantage of the graphics capabilities of the operating system as well as the common 16:9 aspect ratio. Each button in the main menu, which contains sections such as "Music", "Videos", and "TV", gets encased in a box when selected, and for each selection, a submenu comes up, extending horizontally. When any of the options is selected, the entries for each are presented in a grid-like structure, with each item being identified by album art, if its an audio file, or a thumbnail image if it is a picture, a video or a TV recording, and other related options, such as different views for the music collection if "Music" is selected, extend horizontally along the top of the grid. Similarly, other items are identified by suggestive artwork. The grid displaying the items is also extended horizontally, and the selected item is enlarged compared to the rest.

Other features of Windows Vista Media Center include:

• Support for two dual-tuner cards*. In countries other than the United States, there is support for only one dual-tuner card, due to the limit of up to two TV tuners that is imposed in other countries.
• Support for up to four TV tuners*. In countries other than the United States, there is support for a maximum of two TV tuners.
• Native DVD/MPEG-2 decoding support
• Addition of Movies and DVD button which lists all the movies on the hard drive and DVD.
• Tasks button that provides access to jobs such as setting up and configuring Media Center Extender devices.
• The UI is translucently overlaid on the video, if the UI is navigated while the video is still playing. This presently only occurs with the Start and Electronic Program Guide menus. All other menus have the video playing in a small rectangle in the bottom left hand corner, in a similar fashion to previous versions of Windows Media Center.
• Support for high-definition (HD) content, and CableCARD support*. Windows Media Center can play HD video in all countries, but does not support HDTV in any country except from the United States. Additionally, there is no support for HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc movies in any country. CableCARD support is only available by purchasing a new CableLabs certified computer.
• Ability for a digital tuner to function without an analog tuner present.
• New "Sports" section which gives real-time access to sports scores, as well as free broadcasts of games over the Internet.*

Microsoft partnered with Fox Sports and NASCAR to provide these services. Support for fantasy sport-style player tracking has also been demonstrated.

Note that the features marked with an asterisk (*) above are available in the United States only.

Internet TV

Internet TV is a feature, which integrates with the Windows Vista version of Windows Media Center, and allows users to browse (using a UI like the offline video library browsing view) and view streaming, Internet-delivered video from within the Media Center interface or Windows Media Center Extender. Currently, the software is in beta testing and only provides pre-recorded television content from MSN Video. This feature is only available to US residents, more regions will become available in the future.

Application development

Windows Media Center was designed as a programmable platform; other programs can tie into the Media Center UI using the WMC API, which is provided as a managed API. The functionality of Windows Media Center can be extented by three different types of applications:

Windows Media Center Presentation Layer Applications

These are managed applications written using the WMC API and packaged as .NET assemblies. Presentation Layer applications can have full access to both the .NET Framework as well as the Windows Media Center API, with the latter exposing a managed object model to access and manipulate the current states of the media management and playback, live television, video recording as well as the presentation capabilities of Windows Media Center. Presentation Layer applications are rendered using the bitmap-based Windows Media Center Presentation Layer, the user-input and presentation system of WMC. Presentation Layer includes support for animations, dynamic layout, keyboard/mouse as well remote navigation. Presentation Layer applications can be streamed over RDP to Windows Media Center Extenders; so Presentation Layer applications run on the extenders without any modification. Presentation Layer, however, exists only in the Windows Vista version of WMC.

Presentation Layer applications are created using an XML based declarative markup language, known as Media Center Markup Language (MCML). MCML is used to define the user interface, with animation, text input, navigation, data binding, and local storage support available from the markup itself. If custom code or other functionality is required to implement a certain feature, .NET assemblies can be referred. Any .NET language can be used to write the code-behind assemblies that implement the required functionality. An MCML document defines the interface as a collection of UI elements, each exposing four attributes: Content which defines what that UI element will display, Properties to control the presentation aspects of the element, Locals which enumerate the set of private state data for the element, and Rules which allow the attributes to be modified based on certain triggers. By modifying these attributes at runtime, either from markup or code behind classes, the interface is generated.

Presentation Layer applications can either be locally installed, or downloaded from the web as necessary. However, in the latter case, the code is untrusted only the .NET classes that are marked as being safe for use by Internet-originating code can be used. Before an application can be used, it has to be registered with Windows Media Center. An application can either register itself as a top-level menu item, in any of the sub-menus depending on the type of application, as an autoplay handler, into the Program Library, which is the menu category for all programs, or as a background application without an user interface running as long as a WMC session continues.

XAML Browser Application

WMC can also act as host for XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs), which are rendered in the WMC UI itself. XBAPs are rendered using the vector-based resolution-independent Windows Presentation Foundation component of .NET Framework 3.0. XAML Browser Applications have their UI written in XAML with code behind in any .NET language. XBAPs are also limited to Windows Vista. WMC provides limited support for streaming XBAPs to Windows Media Center Extenders. XBAPs have been declared deprecated in Windows Media Center SDK version 5.3.

Hosted HTML Applications

WMC can host Internet Explorer within its own UI (using WMC UI widgets) and can display web pages and web applications. This feature is supported in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Web applications written specifically for being hosted in WMC can use a subset of the WMC API which is exposed via JavaScript. HTML applications are also not fully supported for streaming to extenders.

See also

• Comparison of PVR software packages

External links

• Windows Media Center in Windows Vista: Main Page
• Windows XP Media Center Edition: Main Page
• Windows Media Center Sandbox: Microsoft team development blog
• The Green Button: Media Center community