Windows Media Center plugins provide the option to chip in some extra features that can be used to extend the native functionality. One such plugin is MceWeather, which displays the current weather, weather forecast, and weather map of a selected city or area on your large TV. It was primarily designed for Microsoft Windows Media Center (2005, Vista or 7), but can be used with earlier Windows operating system with Internet Explorer 6 or higher. MceWeather also works on Media Center Extenders like Microsoft XBox360 (which may be connected to a Media Center PC). With MceWeather, you can get instant weather forecasts for coming 4 days and current weather information right on your Media Center TV.

For the first time usage, you will need to launch it manually from Start Menu.After launching the application, click on Settings to specify your area location. Click Add to enter your city name. You can also select a satellite image format for viewing weather maps (Sat-image option), set a language, and change the background color (Style option).

Once done, click Install, followed by Save. You will be prompted to create a shortcut in Windows media Center Extras, click OK to add the shortcut. This will ensure that you will be able to access MceWeather from the WMC Extras section.

The Overview tab displays current weather conditions with four days weather forecast for your area.

The Satellite tab displays weather map of your area based on selected satellite image format.

You can also change background color to red, golden, grey, purple, dark-blue, black, etc, which provides a refreshing change to the weather information view. Unfortunately, there is no option to switch color according to weather conditions.

MceWeather works on Windows XP (WMC 2005), Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download MceWeather

MacroTube is a plugin for Windows Media Center that enables watching YouTube, DailyMotion and MSN Soapbox videos. This enables enjoying videos from these website on a Media Center TV. MacroTube retains all functionalities provided by supported video streaming websites like YouTube and DailyMotion. Other than searching and streaming videos, you can even sort them by rating, category (entertainment, comedy, education, etc), date and relevance.

After installing MacroTube, launch Windows Media Center and go to the Extras section from where you can select and launch MacroTube among the list of available extras.

You can select a video streaming website to watch videos from. Only three video services are available for now – YouTube, DailyMotion or Soapbox.

Videos can be sorted by either category, rating, date, or relevance. This not only serves as an easy video sorting utility, but also retains one of the major functionality to find videos, i.e. a custom search.

This search result is displayed with horizontally aligned thumbnails. You can access more videos by sliding the cursor horizontally and clicking at the end of the last video.

To begin streaming, click any video from the search result.

MacroTube works on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Versions for both 32-bit and 64-bit OS are available.

Download MacroTube

Media Center Mail is a plugin that enables viewing your emails from Windows Media Center. This provides the utility to view emails on your Media Center TV.

To get started, open Media Center Mail and enter a user account name from the Add Users option on the main menu. You can also add an image to represent the user.

Choose Add account for receiving e-mails from the User menu. This will allow you to associate an email account with the username you entered in the previous step.

You will require entering your Pop3 mail client configurations to connect your email account with Windows Media Center. If you are a Gmail user, you can get these configurations from GmailSettings.

Once the settings are complete, open Windows Media Center and select Extras.

Select the mail option to proceed further.

Before going to the next step, visit the developers website and get an activation code which will be required to connect your email account with Windows Media Center. To get your activation code, go to the Activation page, enter your name and email address.

Now enter your login credentials and activation code to connect your email account to the Media Center.

After a successful activation, you can start viewing your mail from Windows Media Center.

Media Center Mail works on both Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Media Center Mail

If youve been using Windows Media Center to record live TV shows and dramas, you must have noticed that it doesnt support saving a recorded TV show in any popular media formats such as, MPG/AVI. So, it leaves users with no other option than to stick by with WTV format which is WMC native format for recorded programs. We have written about converting WTV format before but the command line tool was limited.MC-TVConverter is developed to address this very problem by allowing user to convert WTV recorded media files into WMV, MPG, AVI, FLV, DEMUX, and MP4 formats. Moreover, it has an ability to keep user-defined folder under consistent observation, looking for WTV files to convert them without requiring users input.

It supports simple drag & drop behavior to populate the list. You can also click Select Files button to browser through different locations to add files into the list. Beneath it, a folder can be specified where you save all the recorded TV shows files. Big play button refers to turning-on the folder watching feature.

Once youve put all the files in the list, select the target format from the drop-down menu to begin the conversion process. Along with WTV format, you can also convert DVR-MS and MPG media files into supported formats.

By default, it saves the converted files in original file directory, however, from settings you can choose a permanent output location. All other applications aspects including File renaming, Preferred language, Subtitle file saving, Context menu integration etc., can be controlled from main configuration window.

The application is highly recommended for users who frequently record TV shows using Window Media Center and want to play them on any other device. It supports both Windows Vista and Windows 7, testingwas carried out on Windows 7 x64 system.

Download MC-TVConverter

[via IntoWindows]

Even though Windows Media Center offers a nice set of tools bundled in different menus ranging from Extras, Pictures+Videos, to Music, etc., many users find some options & menu items absolutely useless, thus, want to customize the Start menu along with included tools/options as per their liking. Media Center Studio is a tool for users who want to customize their Windows Media Center. It is a WMC customization tool which emulates same layout to let anyone easily change the main menu titles, while options for removing menu items are also provided to keep only most frequently used options/tools.

Additionally, with Media Center Studio, you can import themes to change the overall look of WMC. To edit the WMC Start menu, launch the application, and head over to Start Menu tab. Each menu title can be changed by clicking a small writing padimaged icon, navigation keys can be seen to browse through menu items spread across the screen, a check box is attached with each menu item, you can uncheck the box to disable the respective item from its menu.

Once youve made changes, click Save followed by Start Media Center in toolbar to view the changes made in WMC. If anything goes wrong, Restore Default option is always available to retain the default WMC menu configurations back.

The application include options to create customized menu items for WMC along with inserting image and audio files. Since it is in beta, you might encounter some problems while adding specified image / audio files or inserting a new menu item.

During testing, it changed menu titles and disabled menu items without showing any errors and lags. It supports Windows Vista and Windows 7. Testing was done on Windows 7 x86 system.

Download Media Center Studio

Last year in February, Nakodari reviewed SecondRun.tv a plugin for Windows Media Center to play videos from Hulu, ABC, and other networks directly. It seamlessly integrates with WMC, offering all the essentials to give a best video watching experience. Recently its author updated us with the release of latest version 2.0. A quick look into new version divulged us a few brilliant improvements, most prominent being an intuitive Channel Builder that enables you to create new channels in SecondRun.tv, it is also possible now to download channels that other users have made open in channel repository.

All the major bugs encountered in version 1.0 beta have been addressed and properly debugged in this version. One most prominent glitch in version 1.0 beta was that users could only watch Hulu videos in full screen, videos from all other supported networks couldnt be watched in full screen mode, all such problems have been sorted out in this latest iteration.

Note: SecondRun.tv is now a paid plugin that costs $3.99. We are giving away 10 licenses to our readers. More information is provided at the bottom of the article.

The installer package comes with a separate Channel Builder, you have to run both setup files to install the plug-in and channel builder respectively.

The Channel Builder offers a nice navigation pane at the left side where you can view all the added channels while options to search through different channels are given in the main window. It lets you add, submit and delete channels anytime you want. First, you need to download or add the channels that you wish to watch in Windows Media Center, it offers a list of downloadable channels ranging from channels for Kids, News, Entertainment, Technology, and so on.

Once channels are downloaded, click Run Guide Processor, it will start processing all the content of specified channels. Furthermore, you can queue-up channels in different days lists (list for each day is available at the bottom to insert a channel), so you can watch your favorite T.V shows, movies, news bulletin, dramas, etc at scheduled intervals.

Once Channel Builder is set up, launch Windows Media Center. You will find SecontRun.tv option beneath Extras in Windows Media Center. Click it to list down all the videos from selected video-sharing websites and networks, and start watching your favorite T.V shows, movies, etc.

The developer has worked very carefully to deploy the pre-defined list of channels, adding new channels and configuring them is hard and a bit dragging, since it doesnt integrate channels live feeds directly and a permission is also required to run Guide Processor for the newly added channel. On the product page, you’ll find a detailed video, showing a generic overview of configuring the plug-in through Channel Builder. The application works fine without showing any problems on our Windows 7 x86 system.

Download SecondRun.Tv Version 2.0

Giveaway

The giveaway will last for 24 hours. To win a license, you need to follow us at @addtips or join our Facebook Page, then tweet about this giveaway (or post it on your Facebook wall), and finally leave a comment with the link of your tweet or wall post. We will pick out 10 lucky winners!

Update: The giveaway is closed, all winners will be notified and receive the license via email.