On Media Center – How to Edit Album information?
I am a new user of Media Center. All things look so nice.
Since I’ve stalled 50GB+ music in my computer, I really appreciate the way Media Center displays my music. However, some of album art of them were mis-displayed. I intended to modify them, but I do not know how to.
Unencrypted QAM is supported in Vista Media Center. CableCard receivers w/o a CableCard can receive UQAM and are required to do so by CableLabs.
Some HD tuner vendors are currently working on adding UQAM support to their drivers.
I intended to modify [the mis-displayed album art], but I do not know how to.
Hi Vincenzo, I recommend Media Monkey for this purpose:
Hi Steve, NVIDIA’s Vista drivers for the 8800 are very poor right now. I would suspect that first.
You can try the MS Media Center decoder check utility, which will let you select which MPEG2 decoder is in use. It works fine in Vista.
HI, Jeff Atwood
Thanks a lot!
Grazie mille!
Hey guys thought I would pass along the solution to my problem…I donwloaded the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder ($19.99) and installed it. I had to change the registry (regedit) as there is not easy easy way change the decoder in MCE. The place the change it is in:
HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\Media center\decoder
PreferredMPEG2AudioDecoderCLSID {E1F1A0B8-BEEE-490D-BA7C-066C40B5E2B9}
PreferredMPEG2VideoDecoderCLSID {212690FB-83E5-4526-8FD7-74478B7939CD}
You need to find the code of the Nvidia decoder which can be found in:
…\Media center\service\VIDEO
PreferredMPEG2AudioDecoder {6C0BDF86-C36A-4D83-8BDB-312D2EAF409E}
PreferredMPEG2VideoDecoder {71E4616A-DB5E-452B-8CA5-71D9CC7805E9}
Just copy the \VIDEO keys and paste into the \DECODER keys. I suggest you export the registry before you make any changes in case you need to import them if there are any problems.
Thanks…Steve.
I have a desktop PC with Windows XP Professional and an Intel based Apple Mac Mini with Front Row – my PC has a TV Tuner capture card that I installed from ATI – and I have an older Apple PowerBook G4 at home and I use all three to work with multimedia files.
While most of my music on my iPod is DRM free I have many videos from the iTunes Store in my iTunes Library that I transferred over to my video iPod the 80 GB model. I am now saving up to buy an Apple TV as soon as I get an HDTV.
There was a time when I might have been interested in Media Center – but I use Front Row on my Mac and have a TV Tuner as I said in my PC which I use with a program called VirtualDub that usually enables me to record video in great quality – but sometimes the picture does not come out as good as it could but is still watchable – just not the best quality possible.
Most of the time though I don’t have problems and it comes out great. I use a video codec for encoding the video called Huffyuv and to decode the video after recording so it appears I use Divx or XviD.
Screw Windows Vista Media Center and Vista’s DRM – sure iTunes also has DRM but OS X does not have it yet in its core like Vista does.
Also FairPlay encoded music can be easily cracked – while videos from iTunes are still more challenging the music is easier and iTunes was originally built on music – FairPlay is better than any DRM in BluRay Disc or HD DVD.
Anyone who has XP Media Center Edition 2005 I’d advise them to just stick with that if they want to continue running Windows with Media Center software and not upgrade.
I just installed Vista Premium and transferred my movies and hooked up the TV. One problem - when I window MCE to view the video or TV in a sizeable window, it stutters really bad…stops for 10 secs starts for 1 then stops for ten…when I maximize the screen its fine. This only happens when put it in resize mode??? System specs:
Intel DC 3.7 extreme
2 GB RAM
500 GB HDD SATA
Geforce 8800 GTS w/680MB ram
Any ideas? Reading some other posts it sounds like some have changed the MCE default decoder to Nvidia - but not sure what they values are for Nvidia??
Any help would be great - thanks!! Steve
I finally got around to installing Vista Ultimate on my media center box and I’ve been completely blown away. I don’t watch too much TV, mainly Adult swim and so forth, so I’ve never been big on the whole media center thing, but wow.
The movie-gallery thing is pretty amazing, looking up cover art and so forth dynamically. The same goes for the sports section. Being able to track sports/individual people with real time statistics is pretty awesome. My roommate plays fantasy football/baseball/basketball, and he’s got all his players set up. The music browsing is pretty quick, though slower then I’d like. I’d preferably like more image and AVI caching, but I’m running over a network. It’s gigabit, but there’s still a performance hit I’d like to avoid.
I’ve just been simply blown away by everything the Media Center has to offer. And it’s runs pretty well on inexpensive hardware.
Case/Powersupply (250W) - $30 (cheap cheap cheap case)
Processer - 2600+ Sempron - $50
Board - BioStar something - $50
Card - 9800 Pro AGP 8x 128mb - $50-$75
Cheap 512 RAM - $30-$50
HD - 320GB SATA - $100
Hauppauge WinPVR 250 - $130
Ultimate - $200 (gotta go OEM; could go Home Premium, but I run an AD)
Runs amazingly well, for a little over $600. Going with Home Premium OEM knocks it down to around $530.
I think what gets me more is that it provides inbox everything that snapstream’s BeyondTV has except commercial skipping. Commercial skipping is important, but the extras in Vista (Such as the Music and Sports and Movies section) far outweigh this small downside. Especially when you consider BeyondTV’s $60 price tag. This is by far the best reason to upgrade to Vista. I was moderately impressed by Business Edition, but Home Premium and Ultimate just blow me away. If you have a media center PC, not moving to the newest version is a crime against media-lovers everywhere.
The only complaint I have now is that it doesn’t ship with more tuner support out of the box. I think that Hauppauge cards are used by most enthusiasts, I wish it would have installed out of the box.
I got Media Center XP with my HP Laptop and bundled TV Tuner, and I haven’t had a single problem. It’s so useful that I’ve left my conventional TV gathering dust in the corner.
I have MCE 2005 now and am mulling a switch to Vista for one reason: MCE will NOT view all terrestrial digital channels by default. Maybe I can find a fix for this in MCE, but I can’t see any digital channel that doesn’t have an NTSC equivalent. For example: 2-2 is PBS-HD over ATSC, and there’s no such thing broadcast in NTSC, so the guide in MCE won’t show 2-2 as a legit channel.
Hopefully Vista is better at this game?
I’ve tried using Vista’s Windows Media Center to burn TV shows to DVD and have had absolutely no success!!! It just gets to the point where it’s about to start burning the program crashes!!!
Once (and only once, I haven’t been able to see it again) there was a toast pop-up in the corner of my screen from Norton. It disappeared too quickly so I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, but I think it said something about Norton’s firewall preventing the program from working. But even disabling the firewall didn’t change a thing!
Needless to say, I’m “this close” to giving up on burning permanently. God, can ANYONE make a program that works?!?!?!
I’m running Vista Media Center too, but I cannot find any info on auto logon. I need that when my HTPC returns from hibernation.
I have tried “control userpassword2” as in XP. It dosent work.
Best,
Peter
Hi Peter,
I use auto-logon for my Vista Media Center as well. I used the following MS knowledge base entry to enable automatic login:
How to turn on automatic logon in Windows XP (and Vista)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315231
I absolutely LOVE the look of Windows Media Center on Vista! I actually just installed Vista, and was previously using Beyond TV 4 on XP. Now, there is ONE problem I am having. When I run SET UP for the TV, it does not recognize any IR HARDWARE. Can anyone help with this? I installed the USB-UIRT, but im not sure if the “IR Hrdware” is something else. Thanks guy!
Well I have had Vista since day 1. All is good if you use 3 party apps. Why? Glad you asked. Media Player 11 won’t play ANY MPG’s, everything is all garbled. Play the same video on DivX, perfect. MCE, well, installed my ATI 650, got the channels done, went to watch TV, and GREEN SCREEN, but the sound was there. Tried to watch the MCE included videos for setup, same crap as on Media Player, garbled mess (but the sound was there). On XP, Media Player 11 worked just fine with videos. It is since I’ve gone to Vista. Any explanations? And don’t give me links to all the damn codecs sites cuz I’ve installed damn near every one. Media Player Classic is the only WINDOWS prg that plays any form of video.
My only glitch is watching xvid/mpeg/avi vidoes - worked fine with Media Center on XP, but has some quality issues with Vista version - the clear whites of the video blink pixelate - is watchable but anoying. I can watch them using Media Player 11, etc but would prefer seemless playback using Media Center. Any suggestions appreciated.
Cheers,
Blake
My only issue is the quality of the picture for television viewing. I have a decent video card and a 22 in lcd monitor, but my picture on live tv is grainy. It is not a signal problem, I have tested the same connection to an actual television and get a perfect pic. I suspect it is related to the monitor resolution?
Blake, I recommend installing ffdshow for playback of xvid/divx and other alternative formats. Works great in Vista Media Center:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm
The advantage of ffdshow is it decodes (almost) everything, so there’s no need to spam your system with a dozen different codec packs from questionable sources.
I am by no means a MS fanboy. I do know that by far my setup (Vista/Xbox 360) allows me to stream HD to my 46 inch Hitachi. Something Apple has yet to grasp. To each his own.