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.

With the release of My Movies 3 one of the most popular movie library plugins for Media Center makes its way into Windows 7. The plugin has received a complete makeover to the user interface as well as updated code to work with the new structure of the Windows 7 Media Center platform. How does this update to an old standby fare against the new mainstays in the Windows 7 Media Center arena? My Movies does bring some features to the table that similar applications dont have such as disc copying inside Media Center that may well make some converts of other plugin users. Lets see how My Movies 3 stands up.

To get started My Movies 3 can be downloaded from the My Movies website. Downloading the plugin is completely free and the basic features are free for everyone to use but there are limitations built into the software. Users who havent used the My Movies software previously are likely to be surprised by the limitations. My Movies uses an Xbox Marketplace style points system for purchasing extra features. Points can be had for participating in the submission of movie metadata to any titles with less than adequate metadata or can be purchased for cold hard cash. A full compliment of features will set you back a whopping $50 if you should choose the cash route.

My Movies uses a collection management application to manage the titles in your movie collection. This setup allows you to install a server/client setup to enable storing your collection data at a single machine and network the data between multiple computers. This is certainly a plus, allowing edits to metadata and images to be propagated across a users entire network without needing to make the changes on each machine. Collection management applications are becoming a much more popular alternative to downloaded or handcrafted text/xml files to store metadata for your movie collection and proves to be much more user friendly.

For those opting to add points to their account through submitting metadata, they can do so through the collection management application. Simply locate any titles in your collection that contain less than adequate metadata, indicated by a yellow or red indicator icon next to the title. These titles are able to be updated inside the management application and will then ask you to submit your additional data to the My Movies service. Youll need to read the guidelines first and agree to the terms of the service or face penalties including suspension of your account. The guidelines are an effort to prevent questionable data from being entered into the central system and keep the metadata complete and clean and curb submitting data simply for points.

Onto the real meat of the plugin, the actual Media Center application, we see a familiar interface similar to other popular movie collection plugins such as Media Browser and Open Media Library. This is actually a departure for My Movies, formerly featuring a more menu based interface reminiscent of the original Media Center. The interface has been updated to reflect the Windows 7 Media Center style but has run into some growing pains along the way.

As you can see in the image above, My Movies uses the default style to output the movie title, date and rating information. The problem comes in when the movie title extends to cover the majority of the third row, obscuring the view. To complicate the situation further, stopping on a single title for approximately four seconds results in the entire display fading into the fan art view and hiding the collection completely.

The other view available to users without the appropriate point levels, list view, suffers the same problem with the fan art display. Stopping on a single title fades the view making reading the listing impossible. Though the list view does have a description of each movie as well as ratings, dates, cast and crew and more information that remains visible.

For those not opting to go the metadata submission route the other two collection views will run you $20 and $40 respectively for covers with details or centered covers. While probably the biggest included feature, disc copying, costs a full $50 to unlock the feature. While this is likely a killer feature for a select few many will likely be content with ripping their disks on a networked pc and simply transferring them with plenty of free software available to get the job done.

Despite setbacks in the interface design, once theyre addressed My Movies 3 looks to provide a feature complete solution to browsing and even growing your Windows 7 Media Center movie library. The collection manager is solid and easy to use for even the newest of users and the plugin interface meshes very well with the default Windows 7 Media Center design making for a seamless integration into an existing system. Unfortunately, considering these usability problems and the price involved in unlocking many features that are included free with other Windows 7 Media Center plugins, disc copying aside, its hard to recommend My Movies 3 over the alternatives.

Do you have a Windows 7 PC but no TV tuner? You may be surprised to learn that you dont need one in order to watch streaming video and even popular TV programming on your Media Center PC or extender thanks to the numerous Media Center plugins currently
available. In this post, well look at the TV plugins you can use with Media Center, including those specifically designed for viewing Hulu content as well as other similar plugins for streaming video.

TV/Hulu Plugins

Plugins that allow you to watch TV shows via Media Center are very popular, especially those that provide access to Hulu, the online site where major TV networks have teamed up to provide free, streaming video. There are a number of different plugins to
choose from, each with their own feature set and fan base. Which one you choose to install may come down to its offerings, ease of use, price, or just personal preference.

The folks over at hack7mc.com have just debuted a new section of their website: a central location for Windows Media Center themes created both by the sites authors as well as individual contributors like yourselves. The new theme directory is available at Theme7MC.com.

Now, theming your Media Center isnt an official feature of the software, but its a relatively easy hack for those of you who like to tinker and personalize your PC in unconventional ways. (We have some more info on this here. Theres also step-by-step instructions for changing the default blue theme to black here).

There are already some pretty great themes available over on the new site, including this new theme called “Bokeh” which features colorful bubbles and black guides and menus.

Once you have your new theme installed, head back over to hack7mc.com and check out how you can customize your Media Center icons to match.

In July, we told you about a new plugin for Windows Home Server called TV Manager. This plugin lets you copy your recordings from a Vista Media Center PC or XP Media Center 2005 over to your Home Server for storage and management. At the time we originally wrote about it, the plugin was still in beta. But now, the first version of the plugin has been officially released: TV Manager 1.0. With TV Manager, you can view your recordings stored on your WHS in Media Center as if they physically resided on your PC. Recordings can also be deleted from either the WHS Console or Media Center.

Since the beta, several fixes and additions have been added to the software, including the following, listed below.

Fixes:

• TV Manager Service setting permissions.
• Compatibility with limited user accounts.
• Launch recordings straight from the Windows Home Server Console.
• Changed how recordings were moved (to fix ghost file issue) but lost the ability to monitor progress percentage.

New Additions:

• Added Media Center Extender compatibility.
• TV Manager Add-In interface redone.
• Experimental ComSkip feature (disabled by default)
• Regenerate the Xml in case of cache corruption without tester.exe.

If youve been waiting for the final version before trying out this software on your WHS, you dont have to wait any more: you can download TV Manager 1.0 from here and the documentation from here.