In case you hadnt noticed previously weve added a pair of new Media Center themes to our Download Center. Future themes and updates will appear in the Download Center section and users can email their themes as attachments to mhealy@hack7mc.com to have them added to the section. This new pair of themes comes from a Hack7MC reader, Steve Firestone (thewarm). Both themes are created to be used with Media Center Studio and since this program has been having issues lately adjusting the start menu items weve included a fix for this as well at the end. Hopefully well see further updates to the MC Studio program soon.

The first of the themes, called Black Desert, features a black background with 3D style blocks as well as a handful of custom start menu icons. To use the theme using will need to have Media Center Studio. Import the theme file from the Themes tab and youll see a new selection available on the main themes window. Select the new theme and press the Apply button under the Themes tab. That should be all there is to changing your Media Center theme.

The second theme, also from Steve, is called A Touch of Red. This theme is a variation of the original with a slightly varied layout of the blocks and a slight touch of red on the forward side.

Both themes are a sleek addition to any budding Media Center theme collection and are very usable inside the Media Center interface. Users may have noticed that a recent update to the Media Center software has left certain features of the Media Center Studio program not working. The update seems to have added what actually appears it may be a simpler replacement for editing the start menu items, though its not currently supported by the Media Center Studio software.

For now there are a few temporary fixes around though to get your start menu back the way you like it. The simplest solution is a handy tool created by Tyborg of The Green Button forums. Simply download the zip file, extract to somewhere accessible and run the program. This will make the changes (described in more detail later) necessary to allow MC Studio editing of the start menu possible once more. In order to keep these changes through future updates the author advises us to add the file to our startup folders or schedule the program to run regularly. Find even more details or follow the discussion here at TGB forums.

What the program does is to rename a couple of files created in a recent update to Media Center. If youve got an aversion to handy tools or it doesnt seem to work for you try the following. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:ProgramDataMicrosofteHomePackagesMCEClientUX. Inside youll find two folders: dSM and dSM-2 with files inside each. To revert to the old method rename the files in these folders. Users have reported more permanent success by created a set of text files with the names of the originals and removing all access to the files.

That should have Media Center Studios start menu functions operating again. Be sure to try out those two new themes and read a few more Media Center Studio guides here at Hack7MC.

The popular Windows Media Center plugin, TunerFreeMCE, has been updated in a release the developer, Martin Millmore, is calling a major upgrade. The new plugin is now Windows 7-only, forgoing Vista support in order to allow for the numerous improvements it includes.

Vista users can continue to use the older version of the plugin, though. The developer says that two-thirds of the plugins users are on Windows 7, so he made the decision to make improvements the majority can enjoy.

So whats new in this release? Things users have been asking for, including:

• A new popup screen for managing the TV programs, allowing you to play the program, set a timer recording to record other showings of the program if you have a TV tuner configured, and if the program supports it you can add it to a playlist or download it (the last two work for BBC WMV programs, but not flash).
• When playing flash content, sometimes the mouse didn’t click in the right place. Now you can mode the cursor round the screen with the remote by pressing the cursor keys, and OK to click. This allows you to play even the most troublesome programs.
• The interface is now touchscreen enabled, so if you have a touchscreen media center you can easily navigate through the screens.
• Plugins are now directly available within the application. When you go to preferences you will see a list of plugins. When you pick one, the system will take care of installing and updating it to keep you up to date with your favorite content.
• MSN has been removed. This is because there is now a native media center app to support MSN.
• Improved memory management – only one instance of TunerFreeMCE will be active at any one time

If youve never tried TunerFreeMCE before, I recommend checking it out. Its a great plugin for watching streaming Internet video on your PC and Media Center extender, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five for UK users and Hulu support for US users. Believe it or not, the plugin is actually free. However, donations are accepted.

(via Ian Dixon)

Read/Leave A Comment – Find More on windows 7

There have been a number of requests for access to the files that were formerly available on Theme7MC.com but hadnt been released with the revised themes here. Also, the original patch files for the themes that have been revised may help alleviate problems being had by users with Media Center Studio. Hopefully, all or most of the themes available from Theme7MC will become available in a revised version that works properly with Media Center Studio. For the time being, however, heres a quick guide to downloading the files. The files will be available permanently in the Download Center section as well.

Theme Patches/Installers

• Around The Mountains 20.8mb
• Midnight Magic 48.5mb
• Astrotoy7 Black 15.2mb
• Bokeh 27.6mb
• Soylet Green 27.8mb
• Flying Whales 39.9mb
• Nowhere Road 50.1mb
• Homeworld 24.2mb

Channel Logos

• UK Freeview – 236kb
• UK Freesat – 621kb
• UK Channel pack – 2.8mb
• Canadian Channel Logos – 339kb

Looking for Media Center Studio Packages? Find five of these themes in MCT format right here!

If youre new to Hack7MC have a look at some of our most popular articles for Windows 7 Media Center users:

• MKVs for Minimalists on Windows 7
• Playing FLAC files in WMP & Media Center
• The Short List of Small Fixes for Windows Media Center

Also, become a subscribing member through any of our free subscription methods including RSS and Twitter.

Over the coming weeks progress will continue to be made on improving the Download Center area to make it easier to find downloads and information about them through that area. Currently holding almost a hundred downloads, each entry will be getting a once over to add additional information and directions to allow to reader to begin using the download immediately. At the moment most downloads should have a Read More link under the download button which should take you to the most relevant article about the download here on Hack7MC.

With any luck well also be expanding the Download Center to include even more programs and files available for download. If youve got any programs, hacks or files for Media Center that you would like to be included in our download archives drop a line at mhealy@hack7mc.com. Hopefully this will make it easier to not only find the downloads youre looking for but also get some basic information on using them.

Thanks to all our regular readers and media center fans for being a part of the Hack7MC community!

Its an often overlooked feature of Windows Media Center, the Radio, but most likely everyone has at least one FM tuner available in their Media Center machine. If youre one of those people who frequently uses Media Centers Radio feature youre likely interested in backing up your lineup of Radio presets. There currently arent any programs available that incorporate Radio presets as part of their backup process so well need to do it by hand. No worries though, the process isnt difficult.

The first step is to open up the Registry Editor by bringing up the start menu and entering regedit in the search box and pressing enter. This should launch the built-in Windows registry editor. Once inside navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionMedia CenterSettingsRadiopresets

Right-click the presets entry and select the Export option. Save the file someplace safe. Now each time youd like to restore your Radio presets youll simply need to double-click this new .reg file to restore the registry entries. Confirm the addition of the data to the registry in the pop-up dialog and you should be all set.

For those of you who arent taking advantage of the Radio section of Windows Media Center due to a lack of good AM/FM radio antenna this can make a good DIY project. There are several guide to making your very own radio antenna available online, an antenna is just a length of properly sized conductive metal after all. You can find a few good guides to creating a radio antenna here in pdf form, from eHow, or in this more complete guide to everything youd possibly want to know about antenna.

Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy Windows Media Center knowing that your personal Radio presets are backed up for posterity. Thanks to Joe Hecht for sending us this handy little tip and thanks to all for reading Hack7MC. Have a tip youd like to share? Send it to us here on our Contact Page!

Lets face it, after a while Windows 7 Media Centers background image can become rather dull. Luckily, sprucing it up isnt exactly rocket science. We can use Media Center Studio to quickly and easily change the default background to one of our choosing. All we need is Media Center Studio and a high resolution image from someplace like interfacelift.com. Make sure to choose an image with a minimum resolution that matches the highest resolution of your monitor. Enlarging images leaves artifacts and pixelation and we dont want that, especially on the big screen. Another good tip is to pick one with some blue in it as the rest of the Media Center elements are blue.

Now that weve got our background we need Media Center Studio. Download and install the program from the authors site then, make certain Windows 7 Media Center is closed, and launch the program. From the start menu the program can be found under Start > Programs > Advent > Media Center Studio. To get started changing things about in Media Center create a new theme by pressing the New button in the Home ribbon.

Now to change the background we need to expand the Images > Common > Background. The images were interested in changing at this point are COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and COMMON.BACKGROUND.PNG. Change the images to your newly downloaded background image by pressing the browse button above the original displayed on the right.

You may notice that the images appear extremely small in Media Center Studio for some reason but this doesnt seem to effect the output. After changing both images save the theme with the Save button at the top then return to the Themes tab at the top and bottom.

Select the newest theme at the bottom, which will be marked with todays date and time, then press the Apply button at the top under the Themes tab. Then just launch Windows 7 Media Center and everything should be all set, easy.

Thats all there is to it. Much easier than the last time we wrote a guide on changing the background in Windows 7 Media Center. For those looking to get rid of the animated blue images replace the rest of those images listed under background with a transparent png image (right-click -> save as).

Not a reader of our RSS Feed yet? Its the same great info delivered direct and its nice to see that reader number grow over on the right!

One of the advantages of having your own personal Windows 7 Media Center setup is the ability to automate mundane tasks, like metadata retrieval. Many of the metadata retrieval tools available feature ways to completely automate the process as they run in the system tray. Media Center Master does all that and more, checking multiple sources before deciding whether or not its even got the correct movie and then acquiring a ton of data and images for each listing. Weve looked at MCM before, almost a year ago now, but lets take a look at whats new since then.

To get started with the latest version of Media Center Master head over to the MCM official forums and select the thread with the latest version. Download and installation is fairly standard procedure. Launch Media Center Master from Start > Programs > Media Center Master. First time users should go to the Application menu and select Set Scan Folders.

Add your movie folders and hit done, Media Center Master will begin scanning those folders for movie or TV content as this version supports TV series as well. Press the triple arrow button to expand the TV Series view. Looking in the option there is certainly quite a bit more to the program than there was a year ago. Much of it has become standard options for metadata retrieval tools: renaming, actor images, poster downloads, etc. A few of the options, however, are quite impressive (and slightly confusing).

The new downloader feature is particularly interesting and seems to be a major of Media Center Master though instructions on how to work it seem to be quite unavailable. Inferring the intent is to automatically download television and movies one may also question its legality. Losing as great a metadata tool as Media Center Master to some legal quagmire would be a big loss. It would be good to see Downloader become a second program thats capable of interacting with Media Center Master.

The addition of a Post-Processing is an exciting addition to the program, allowing you to execute batch files and such after Media Center Master has finished processing a movie. This means the ability to monitor a folder for new movies then automatically retrieve metadata and apply Stark Covers (though youll need to use this workaround). Also, a set of options for automatically (or manually) downloading theatrical trailers for your collection is great to see included.

Back in the main dialog Media Center Master begins to automatically process the movie folders and at metadata retrieval it really is a master. With options set to check multiple sources for the best possible results and download backdrops, posters and actor images all automatically the program is remarkably accurate. There were very few movies that the program couldnt identify on the first run.

Media Center Master was able to update our metadata in a matter of minutes over the network updating all the relevant data and giving us a nice clean default Movie Library view (which seems an impossible endeavor some days). For those movies not picked up automatically, simply right-click the listing and select Fetch Metadata. If no listing is found on this manual run the MCM will prompt for you to enter an IMDB number, typically found in the url of a movie on IMDB.com and beginning with tt. This will help the program find the correct title and fill out the metadata for the movie.

The program also supports downloading content for Media Browser, XBMC and Boxee for users of those programs and plugins. Thats all there is to it, using Media Center Master really is both automatic and incredibly accurate following a quick setup of the options. The author of the software is extremely dedicated having posted 33 updates in the last year adding countless features to the program. Best of all the program is completely free and has a great community of users as well as the developer on the Media Center Master forums. Media Center Master is definitely worth a try and will likely have to back to watching movies instead of filling out metadata in no time.

Remote Potatos original accomplishment, allowing us to view Media Centers EPG remotely and even schedule recordings may have been dwarfed by its newest one. Remote Potato now has the ability to stream recorded TV from your Media Center machine to anywhere with internet access. Theres also been a number of improvements to the guide functions (the original reason we love it). Lets take another look at what used to be just a handy way to schedule recordings while away from the Media Center.

To get started with Remote Potatos newest features well need to download and install the latest version of Remote Potato from FatAttitude. The program will need to be installed on the main Media Center machine only. Remote Potato uses a web-based front end for remote viewing meaning no extra software to install on each machine. Once installed on the Media Center machine access to the front end can be found at http://networkname:9080. This of course is only possible if the proper firewall rules are allowed during setup, which you will be prompted for during installation.

Once installed and running the first thing of note is the revamped start page for Remote Potato. This new look is certainly more stylish and even a little bit entertaining watching the background respond to mouse movements. Those looking for something different can even choose from a few other themes in the Remote Potato server configuration including retro and minimalist. Theres also a blank theme included for those looking to customize for themselves.

The biggest new feature of recent version, however, is the ability to remotely stream Recorded TV to anywhere with access to the internet. Simply press the Recorded TV entry in Remote Potatos menu to bring up a listing of recorded television. Just choose an episode, press play and select a quality. Here of course is where it gets a little sticky.

In normal quality, over a gigabit network, everything was able to stream from the main Media Center machine (no lightweight machine). Unfortunately, normal quality was terrible to actually watch. Content was fairly blocky during action sequences even on HD content.

Likely this was only due to the quality settings chosen when play began, unfortunately, we couldnt get HD content to successfully stream over the local network in any higher quality setting than normal. Hopes were high as it is a gigabit network but the buffer would start to climb then abruptly wonk out displaying random numbers. Also the server would report all clients disconnected in debug modes event viewer.

Standard Definition content was able to be streamed in full quality (Ultra) with considerable success over the local network. There was quite a bit of buffering going on at some points but the show was ultimately watchable in the default view. Under the full screen view, however, there was considerable interlacing visible though when scaling standard definition to 1080p in a web browser this is completely forgivable.

Yet to be tested personally, streaming across the internet is likely to only give worse results with a much more limited available bandwidth to work with. Though the program has spawned an epic thread on The Green Button spanning over 52 pages at this point and the answer may lie somewhere in there to solve our streaming troubles. If you experience any issues the thread appears to be a fantastic place to get technical support for Remote Potato bot from the community and the project owner carlosp_uk.

Browsing around to the older features of the program this is one thing Remote Potato still does extremely well. Remote scheduling of recordings and viewing of the TV guide have become much more stylized and easier to use. New features include loading the EPG data, including channel icons, directly from the Media Center machine as opposed to retrieving them on each client machine.

With new selectors for popular times of the day and the ability to quickly select later dates its almost easier to use than the built-in Media Center TV guide. Shows are now colored coded similar to the option available in Windows 7 Media Center and any icons added by My Channel Logos are loaded automatically.

Search the guide from the main menu as well as managing scheduled recordings and even series schedules, Remote Potato still does all of this very well. Even better its all complete free and open-source, two of our favorite words. Be sure to give Remote Potato a try, its definitely worth the time to install and even seems to run straight out of the box very well. Even if you havent the need for remote scheduling capability its interesting to see whats slowly becoming possible with Windows 7 Media Center.

There are already a handful of movie movie trailer plugins for Windows 7 Media Center, though they may require the user to download the trailers or install additional codecs to work. My Trailers 2.0 from MCEZone is simple to use and relatively easy to install though the full version will set you back about six bucks. There is a trial version available now however so you can try the plugin before you shell out for the full thing. How does the trail version stack up to the alternatives out there? Lets find out.

To get started, download the trial version from MCEZones plugins page and go through the standard installation process. After installation launch Windows 7 Media Center, disappointingly the default installation doesnt add an icon to the Movies strip and youll need to launch the plugin from the Extra Programs menu. This can, of course, be remedied by Media Center Studio if youre so inclined. Upon launching the trial version youll be met with a 20 second notice that youre running a gimped version.

The notice lets you know that this is the trial version limited to 10 trailers at a time total and directions on how to purchase the full version. Once the program has launched youll quickly notice that there are only five trailers listed. Though they do blend well with the default look of Windows 7 Media Center in the default settings. To change the layout and mode press the Play button on your remote or the ctrl button for those at a keyboard.

In the settings notice that there are two modes listed under Trailers. This is why there are only five trailers listed at a time in the trial version of the plugin, thats five trailers for each mode ten total. There are also options for changing various aspects of the plugins layout including sorting by Date, changing the way covers are displayed, the background and the movement effect. Though there are a number of options for each (and to each his own) none of the additional settings seemed to blend as well with the default look of Windows 7 Media Center.

One interesting setup was the VideoMode setting which seemed to want to put the trailer behind the line-up, somewhat obscured from view, but only managed to accomplish it whenever the back button was pressed during trailer playback.

The selection of movies available in each mode was somewhat disappointing unfortunately. It certainly would have been nice to see at least a single title I recognized but they seemed to be relegated to more obscure titles as many streaming trailer apps seem to be. Perhaps with the ten title limit removed bigger name titles begin to appear more frequently in the listing. One extremely great thing going for this plugin, however, is that it streams videos in HD WMV which will require no extra codecs installed and no downloading videos. This means it should work just fine with any Media Center extenders .

So the line-up of trailers was slightly disappointing as was the lack of an icon in the main Start strips by default but is it worth the six large? Sure, I actually even managed to find an obscure Ed Norton movie Id be interested in watching (and isnt that the point of trailers?), plus its only $6. So head on over to MCEZone and at least give the trial version a go.

There are a lot of web browsers out there but only a handful of them ever make any real news. Kylo, on the other hand, has caught the attention of Media Center users everywhere by claiming to be the perfect web browser to use on the big screen. Though it seems this new product should be aimed squarely at the Windows Media Center crowd there is a catch, it doesnt work with the standard MCE Remote. In fact the software is somewhat a thinly veiled guise at selling a piece of hardware (an air mouse).